Out-of-office messages are critical to keeping things moving smoothly during times when employees are absent. They also serve as reminders to others of what day you won’t be available.
I will be on leave returning Monday, August 10th. Please anticipate a delay in response. For urgent requests or escalations, please contact:
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As a person who hates voicemail, I applaud this. Send me an email. Give me a paper trail.
“I am spending time with family today – some things are MORE important than work.”
Note: You can also set different automatic out of office replies for different people. Just click the Rules… button in the bottom-left corner and add a rule for each person or email subject.
Usually, you have the option ready, and all you have to do is go to your email settings. Once you are there, you will see something like Automatic Replies, or even Out of office AutoReply, as it is with Gmail:
In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"
I used to work at a place where we would occasionally send reports of network misuse that sometimes included inappropriate images the user had stored on work devices. One person had an email system that was somehow set up to make any attached images the profile pic for that account. So she would end up with random pornographic images as the profile pic whenever she received reports from us. She said she had no idea how to change it and could we please help? Since she was not part of our company, and I have no idea how that could even happen, I just started sending her kitten pictures after every report that included an image. Problem solved.
Figured it out: only works when set in driving mode, and driving mode works if you are actually driving or not 🙂 Until then, this will work until they come up with a better solution. Thank you!!
Yeah this sort of chain is why we got an out of office address for each department. It went to the managers who were never all off at the same time.
Yup. Well, I do specify I will have “sporadic/intermittent” access to email or “no” access to email, because there is a difference. But short and sweet is the way to go.
If you scroll down, towards the bottom you'll find a section called Vacation Responder. There, tick Vacation Responder On and fill in the dates for when you want any received emails to be replied to with the automatic response.
Pet peeve: a fe people I know use the OOO reply to say something like ‘Have a great day!’ It is on all the time, and for no helpful reason.
Even if it’s for a short amount of time, an autoresponder helps you enjoy your time off from work.
The best holiday messages are short, cheerful and specific. Try to include the person’s name, as well as a memory from the holiday season or year.
I don’t need some fancy, forensic gin-juggler to tell me why I like something. Just keep it simple. And real happiness is about simplicity.
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.