If you work in an industry (like PR, for example) where clients expect a response in a matter of moments or hours, you may need to set an out-of-office message if you’re absent for an afternoon. If you’re not sure whether you should set one, ask your boss or a coworker or consult your employee handbook.
My parents ran a furniture refinishing shop when I was in school. There are workshops and conferences for this trade. I attended a private high school that was primarily a boarding school. Once, when my parents needed to attend a middle-of-the-week event, they arranged for me to stay overnight in the school dorms. Upon being asked by the house mother where my parents were, I said they was at a stripping convention.
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We have some field staff who have out of office replies set up for when they do fieldwork. On one hand it’s nice I guess, but on the other hand, they aren’t dealing with urgent matters only they can handle (they don’t manage projects or deal with clients), so it seems a bit unnecessary? No one has been disciplined for not responding to an email the same day. But maybe I’m just a crabby Gen-Xer, and a client can stand to wait a few hours or until the next day to get an answer from me.
I’m out of town. I’m looking forward to connecting with you when I return. If you’re getting this note, it means that I’ve received your email. (Thank you!) I’ll respond to your note as soon as I can. In the meantime, here’s a list of five questions that I get asked often. I’ve included brief answers to each one below. Take a peek. You might find the answer that you’re looking for—right away! [Include brief FAQs here] I hope those FAQs were helpful. Don’t worry, though—even if your question was one of the questions listed above, I will still send a personal response to your note as quickly as I can, just to make sure that your question or problem has been completely resolved. Talk to you soon!
Our store will be closed until the end of the week for [Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year]. We are happy to inform you that all of your emails will be answered once we are back on [date].
Do you know what we’re doing too much of? We’re working too much, and we think too seriously about ourselves while doing it. That’s why including a joke or something fun in your out of office message could be so powerful.
You don’t have to disclose the specific reason for your absence in your out-of-office message. You can simply say “I’m on leave” or “I’m currently out of the office.” This goes for any reason you’re OOO.
So what do good out-of-office messages look like? Here are a handful of examples that will help you craft the perfect out-of-office message:
As a “don’t try this at home” anecdote, last week we had an all staff retreat, and we were asked to put up away messages. I put a perfectly professional one up for outside email, but in a fit of whimsy, the internal mail triggered an away message that said “Why are you emailing? We are supposed to be paying attention to the retreat!” I figured, we were all at the retreat, so nobody would ever know. Of course, someone did email me 30 minutes before everything started, and triggered the message. Fortunately, he figured out it was an away message and thought it was funny.
I think I started following that Tiktok account after this video and, if I recall correctly, the OOO writer is an SVP who is trying to reset a company culture that has very little work/life balance. I always liked it, but that background info made me love it that much more.
People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
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Voice mail is a strictly worse medium than almost any alternative. You don’t get the opportunity to converse and ask questions back and forth like you do with a phone call; you can’t extract information efficiently from the message like you can with an email (the old “ugh, I have to listen to this entire message over again just to check one thing he said at the end” scenario).
I will be out of the office starting on (beginning date) and ending on (ending date).
I’ll be at a work off-site and will have limited availability by phone and email until ___, please contact ___ for immediate needs about ____ otherwise I will respond as soon as possible”
“The world is serious enough as it is - people need, and usually appreciate, an unexpected moment of levity in their day,” he says, when quizzed about how recipients might respond to such an OOO. He also confides that he himself has dispensed with auto responses altogether – though not for idealistic reasons. “The last time I tried to set one up, I botched it so badly that somehow it resent every single email in my outbox from the previous year - client emails, firing notices, literally thousands of emails.”
Select File > Automatic Replies. Select Send automatic replies.Select Only send during this time range.Choose the dates and times you'd like to set your automatic reply for.Type in a message.Select OK.