10. Office Closed for Annual Vacation. Use this template for your annual year-end vacation. Hi (specify the Name field id), I am out of the office for my annual year-end vacation and will not be able to check my mail until after the New Year.
Thanks for writing! You can expect a response to your note in 1-2 business days. While you’re waiting—surprise! Here’s something I made for you: [Include a worksheet, tool, video, blog post, checklist, resource list, or whatever you’d like!] I hope [name of thing] makes your day a little brighter and easier. Thanks for your patience, and talk to you soon!
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In my much, MUCH younger days, I printed out a photo of a cruise ship with an arrow and “I am here” pasted on it and taped it to my monitor…
Not quite an OOO, but a former boss had an email signature that said she was doing field work so her email responses would be delayed.
I work for a Japanese company which has a regular rotation of engineers who come over for 2-4 years so we get some enjoyable translations for all manner of communication.
Hello! Thanks for getting in touch. I’m out of the office until [DATE] with limited access to email. But never fear! I’ve left you with some helpful writing tips to read and share.
I’ll be sure to reply to your message when I wade through my inbox upon my return. If your message is time-sensitive, please send an email to [Contact Name] at [contact email].
I will be on leave returning Monday, August 10th. Please anticipate a delay in response. For urgent requests or escalations, please contact:
Yes – it’s become a stock phrase that people think sounds polite but they’re not grasping the nuance of it.
In addition to existing holiday pay, UToledo will provide enough additional paid days off to eligible employees, as indicated in the schedule below. For additional details, please review the Official UToledo Winter Break Policy.
But some of us just aren’t as lucky. Or if we’re traveling during the winter and heading up north — well, we’re going to run into some snow, aren’t we?
There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
I accidentally left my slightly-more-than-professionally-testy “I am out of the office due to a lapse in government funding” voicemail greeting up for a couple months after funding was restored, oops.
Front makes it easy to save vacation responders and turn them on and off. If you're not on Front (yet!) here's how to save one in Gmail or Outlook. Then just copy your message into your vacation responder, rest assured your emails will get a response, and hit that glorious "Sign out" button.
My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it’s only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …
20. "Hey there, this is [your name] from [your company]. I'm out of the office until [date]. In the meantime, please direct your inquiries to [coworker's name] at [email address]. They can also be reached at [phone number]. Thank you."
But I'm someone who has co-workers in almost every time zone, on almost every continent, and in almost every geographic region, and I simply can't imagine using most of these examples with co-workers in, say, South Korea or Japan or Nicaragua. Like, the account manager who reaches out to me for help accessing a particular system in Seoul doesn't need my personal story about why I'm taking time off and all the fun (or, for that matter, not fun) things that I'll be doing — they need help gaining access to [system] in order to complete the job tasks that have been assigned to them. If I am not available to help them, they need to know who can, and if there just *isn't* anyone else who can perform this task, they need to know when I will be able to.