Thank you for your email. I am currently on furlough indefinitely and will not be checking email during this time. Please reach out to my colleague, Darius Robinson, a project manager at the museum who can answer any questions or help you find the right contact while I’m out. He can be reached at [email protected].
If you still need to reach me, you can email [email protected]. Or you can email my assistant at [email protected]. They can point you in the right direction.
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By which I mean to say: I’m on holiday, I’m definitely sunburnt, and I’m sorry I missed your email.
Others like to take the opportunity to inject a little personality and make the reader smile, like our very own Rachael’s summertime out-of-office:
If your request is urgent, please send your request to [contact name] at [contact email].
Next, click Send automatic replies.Tick the “Only send during this time range” box. Set the dates you’ll be out of the office. You can skip this step if you want to manually turn off automatic replies when you get back to the office.Then set your automatic out of office reply under the Inside My Organization tab. This will be the automatic response sent to people from your company who email you while you’re away.
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.
Not a big fan of this overly wordy version, but at least the OOM-writer gives you contact info for the people who might be able to help. My pet peeve is “I am out of the office until the 12th of never” with no indication of who might be able to help. But… we also have people who turn on their out of office while teleworking. WHAT?! You’re working. No one cares from where.
Yes – it’s become a stock phrase that people think sounds polite but they’re not grasping the nuance of it.
And… it’s playing in the background as I write this email. Guess what? I’m on vacation! And I do love my occupation.
Between now and then, I recommend escaping the summer heat with a delicious Aviation & Tonic. Here’s my recipe:
It was a commodities trading firm. I still barely know what they do. But, I would answer the phone, listen to whatever they said, understand not much and then I would say “lemme put you on hold” and then I would turn to the nearest person not on the phone and I’d say something dumb like “They’re calling about like…salt maybe?” And then I’d transfer to that person and they would figure out who it went to. (They all knew who was trading what that day. Nobody ever told me.)
An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.
Not sure how to embed an animated gif in your signature? Here's how to spice up your next out of office reply and add an animated gif.
Hijacking this with a question- what do you do when you no longer have an co-workers to serve as an out of office contact? I find myself putting up the OOO less and less, because there’s no one left to respond to anything in my absence (beyond my supervisor who has no knowledge of how to do the tasks of my job).
The OOO: was there ever a less apt acronym? (Ooo? Ugh, more like.) It wouldn’t be so bad if it actually worked when it was your turn to set one up, but unless you happen to live in France, where a worker’s ‘right to disconnect’ is enshrined in law, the twin fears of missed opportunities and the mail mountain that’s piling up in your absence will likely keep you furtively glancing at your in-box.
Hi! I will be out of the office this week. If you need immediate assistance while I’m away, please email (COLLEAGUE NAME).