I appreciate your message. I am out of the office currently with no office email access. However, return on the following [date-of-return].
Also known as "autoresponder emails," out-of-office messages run the gamut. From funny, to clever, to snarky, this message can both show your personality and let senders know that, well, you’re out of office.
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You need to let colleagues, clients, and prospects know that you won’t be available, while ensuring that they know the best course of action to take while you’re away.
People also hate it when some people sign “Sincerely,” but also a bunch of people hate “Thanks” and “Best” and “Toodles” — almost any signature you pick someone will hate. This is one of those areas of language that feels really subjective and culturally dependent and also…isn’t that big of a deal?
Our factory and office will be closed from [date] for Celebrating [holiday name]. I hope this holiday will more enjoyable and give you more time to be with your family. All your inquiry will be attended to once we resume normal operation on [date]
Turn on automatic response indefinitely or choose the dates you’d like for them to appear. Write your OOO message in the message field, then click “Save.”
A client rings to tell you your out-of-office message has a typo in it, or, worse, is mind-numbingly boring. Suddenly you’re wrenched out of holiday mode and back into the throes of work, weeping as you log back into your email server to change your response as your shandy grows warm and flat.
I get really annoyed at people that don’t have put up OOO messages and I am left wondering if they are out or just ignoring me. I collaborated with a woman who was out frequently but never put an OOO. She also got very prickly if she felt you were going around her. So anytime we didn’t get a response from her, we had to go through this guessing game of “do we wait, do we talk to someone else, how important is our request.” I was glad when she moved on.
Many professional out of office messages are aimed towards providing a direct line of communication by notifying your absence and providing an alternative i am currently out of the office, with limited no access to email.
The dialogue “You may remember me from..” by Troy McClure is uncannily iconic for all Simpsons fans. It has also evolved into an autoresponder saga. By the time the reader realizes that they are going to wait a while, they would have already had the fun of reading this hilarious convo. Have a look at this funny out of office reply and see if your associates would love to hear it:
Oh you see, I do that on purpose. That way I can use the same OOO message internally and externally. Anyone within our company can find us in the global address book. Anyone outside our company who has done business with my department has my email address & my manager’s.
And that's it. Easy peasy, right? We know there are tons of genius out of office messages we missed, so if you've got a favorite don't forget to share it with us in the comments below!
I’ve started going really, really simple on OOO messages – literally just “I’ll be out of the office until ___, please contact ___ for questions about ____”
With emojis looking different on nearly every operating system and brand of smartphone, this is a bold choice which could leave your emailers confused. Are you crying with laughter or wailing with existential dread? Hard to tell.
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.
This might seem obvious, but make sure you clearly state and restate the dates you’ll be out of the office. Even if you put the dates in your subject line, you should also repeat them in the message body. It’s hard to over-communicate here. State exactly when you’ll be back, and whether or not you’ll be responding to calls and emails while you’re out. If you’re on the road but are responding to messages, let everyone know if you’ll be unavailable for an extended period (while on a flight, for example), if you’ll be in a different time zone, and in general, that they should expect a delay in response time. All in all, set realistic expectations and strive to be as specific as possible.
I used to know someone who had a snarky message about how “if this is an emergency, there are no actual emergencies in my field,” and then encouraged someone to Google for “goats in trees” and calm down. Yes, she was allowed do that in her office.