If you’re taking a few days off and want to respond only to urgent emails, this template would be a great fit.
An out of office message lets you keep people informed and tells them how to proceed in your absence. You can also select options for urgent matters within your out of office message.
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I had a colleague that managed to set up a rule for an OOO that would only get sent if you cc’d or bcc’d him, which basically said that all those cc mails would get automatically put in a separate folder and he may or may not ever read them – may the odds be ever in your favor basically.
Once I got an auto reply from a stakeholder on a project that said something to the effect of “Thanks for contacting me. Due to the large volume of email I receive, I don’t read them all. If I haven’t responded within 3 business days, please try again.”
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.
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Hi, You just missed me. I am out of the office until [MM/DD]. If your question can wait, great. I’ll reply when I get back. If not, contact [name] at [email] or [phone] and they’ll take good care of you. Meanwhile, feel free to peruse our FAQ section of [website] to see if your question can’t be answered there.
Peace and joy to you and your family this holiday season.I hope you have a nice and warm holiday season! I'm truly grateful to have a friend like you! Thinking of you with lots of love!I hope you enjoy a wonderful Christmas!
Hello, We are currently closed for the holiday. If it’s something urgent you can email [name] at [email]. Kind regards. [Name/signature]
Below you can find our 30 best out of office messages to add to your automatic email. Out of office messages for different situations – when you are on vacation when you are abroad when you are sick or when there’s a public holiday
Half of the auto-replies I get are for very specific chunks of time. Like, if you are out of the office for three hours I don’t need to know, dude.
This is so timely for me as I begin a 2 week vacation in 15 days (no I’m not counting days or anything). I have been agonizing over how much detail to share in my Out of office message as I will be completely unreachable during this time.
Finally, if you’re doing something incredible for the holiday break, you may as well let people know about it. Heading skiing for a few weeks, or going on a cruise? Put it in your out of office! It’s not like your emailers can do anything about it.
Even if I do have access to my email while I’m vacation, I typically do “I’m out of office with no access to email or voicemail until (date). For anything requiring immediate attention please contact (boss).” If I happen to check my email I can still forward the important ones, but otherwise hopefully people get the message that I will not be responding.
For those of you arguing that entrepreneurs and salespeople must always be available, I present to you Exhibit A. While this is specific to Yesware (and you should check out their other OOO examples), it's easy enough to tweak to fit your industry.
We hereby inform you that due to the prevailing hazardous situation of [X], it is decided that all our offices in the city [X] will remain closed. At this time, it would be very difficult for all of you to come out of your homes for office as there is unrest everywhere and one never knows when his turn will come. So, by caring for the safety of all of you people it is the mutual decision from all of us that our office will remain closed during this period. As to open it in this prevailing situation is not less than a risk. So, it will remain closed for a long period of time.
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…