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I use a basic OOO message – “Hi! I’m out of the office x date(s). I will return your email when I’m back at my computer on x date. If you have an urgent matter, please contact x or y. Have a nice weekend/holiday/etc!/Thanks!” My office WANTS us to use more personal and witty OOO messages like this article’s message. And that stresses me out. I don’t want to spend time worried about whether my OOO is witty. I don’t want to annoy other people just looking for basic info like when am I back and who they can contact in the meantime. I correspond a lot with third parties on serious matters (legal), and I don’t think a message like that is appropriate. So, I just keep using my basic message and hope my supervisor’s supervisor doesn’t email me and see that I’m not “trying.” Ugh.
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I hate to break it to you, but I’m on annual leave until [end date] and will have limited access to my emails until then.
My husband’s voice mails says “…if you need immediate assistance call Mary at ####…”, only Mary retired something like eight years ago. I mention this to him every once in a while. It hasn’t changed.
3. We do holidays our own way. When you hear the name Black Friday, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? It’s probably one of the following: discounts, sales, or free shipping.
Thanks for your email. Please expect a delay in response due to a medical emergency. In case of urgent queries, please reach out to me on my cell or to my colleague at [email protected].
I set my OoO for individual public holidays, because I know they’re not global, and I get emails from lots of different countries.
Not only did Kopelman manage to turn his out-of-office message into an epic poem of sorts, but also, he actually went through the trouble of creating a delightfully snarky, vacation-specific email address for his recipients.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Try This Effective Prospecting Voicemail Script [Tips Included] Sales | 12 min read
The example above (which comes from NY Times) may not take advantage of some of the tips we mentioned, but it’s great because it’s so short. Due to its absent-minded straightforwardness, such a message can be perceived as a real, non-automated reply — as if you were so busy that you only carved out a few seconds to type these five words.
That’s the way ours is set up, so anyone who was emailing that guy at the time would have seen it.
Image Source: https://onepoint21jigawatts.tumblr.com/post/61059236581/day-1-favorite-movie-field-of-dreams-1989
Oh shoot. You need something and I’m unavailable today. Here’s the good news: you have options.
If you’re going away on vacation, it’s very useful to set an automatic “out of office” reply for your emails. These automatic replies let people who email you know that you are not available to reply to their messages. Here’s how to set up an automatic out of office reply in the Microsoft Outlook desktop app and the web version.
Something that actually was an issue with my employer ages ago: at one time there was a policy that out of office would only go to internal people, and nothing would be sent at all to anyone external. Apparently this was felt necessary in order to mitigate risk of burglary, so people wouldn’t know that “John Winchester has gone on a hunting trip” and that his house was empty.
However, when I email the backup person I also cc the original person. If the issue gets totally resolved, the original person is well aware. If the issue is not resolved, the original person can pick it up pretty easily.
The one from “Central Intelligence” with the Rock that I love is is (paraphrasing) :