Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I will be returning on (Date of Return).
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
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Two to three sentences is usually enough to tell recipients everything they need to know.
If you see the Automatic Replies button, follow the steps to set up an automatic reply.
Before each holiday or irregular business day that your office will be closed, follow this checklist to ensure your excellent customer service continues and your business remains safe throughout the closure.
Running away from your inbox or your work responsibilities doesn’t solve problems, it merely delays them. What boyd suggests, though, is something different. Her strategy asks us plan ahead of time: to construct an off ramp from our jobs as well as an on-ramp for the eventual re-entry. Her asks aren’t Herculean but they require some foresight — and they demand that a person be very upfront about what they want from their time off, and that they commit to protecting their time.
Yes, I do like that option. I can either redirect off the cuff, or if the message isn’t urgent, delay delivery so they get it after they get back.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office and will be back at (Return Date). During this period I will have limited access to my email.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.
Who says an autoresponder needs to be impersonal? You can use your OOO message to continue building a relationship with present and potential customers by showing off the knowledge and products you have to offer. You can include a case study, a downloadable to your latest report, or a link to an excellent blog post you published. Not only does this further your credibility, but it also allays the feelings of frustration customers might feel while not being able to reach you.
As a result, our text-based work communication has morphed into a series of strange, stilted, passive aggressive, and performatively upbeat exchanges. Much of the actual text of work email exchanges is ornamental filler language filled with exclamation points and phrases like “just looping back on this” that mask burnout, frustrated obligation, and sometimes outright contempt (the absolute best example of this is a wonderful 2015 post titled, “Just Checking In,” where writers Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford write fake emails in this vein to see who can cause the other the most panic).
My favorite thing is setting my OOO to only run for a specific amount of time. I will absolutely forget to turn it off if I have to do it manually, but we can just set a date/time range for it to start/stop. So I usually start it around 4 pm the day before and end it at 7 or 8pm the night before I return.
[Tweet: “Are you going on holiday? Learn the best tips for writing your next out-of-office auto-reply email in English.”]
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.
Education Details: Create an out-of-office template. In Outlook, create a new email message. Enter a subject and message body for your out-of-office template. Select File > Save As.. Give your template a name and in the Save as type drop-down, select Outlook Template (*.oft).. You can change the location for your template, but you can also pick the default location, which is usually c:\users\ username \appdata
If those weren’t bad enough, if anyone on that lists sets up an out-of-office message, it *automatically* replies all. If the email bounces back, it bounces back reply all. One guy left the company and his email had a permanent out-of-office auto reply. The list was quite busy for a month or so and the message popped up multiple times a day.
Honest communication, even in the form of an email auto reply, is a roadmap. It helps people understand how best to help you and, in turn, allows them to better help themselves. Straightforward expectation setting is a way to be respectful of your coworkers’ time and pressures, but most importantly, it’s a way to be respectful of and guard your time. Even if you don’t feel an intense need to be more open in your workplace correspondence, consider modeling the behavior for others who work with you or, especially, those who work for you. It’s a small change in behavior but it’s a meaningful one. And this summer is the perfect time to start.