If we are going to be away from our office for several days, we may want to let people know that we won't be available to read or respond to their email messages. The Automatic Replies feature can do this for us. We can configure Outlook to automatically generate replies to incoming messages when we are unavailable.
Let's take a look at some AutoReply options in the following video.
Description of the video:
If we are going to be away from our office for several days we may want to let people know that we won't be available to read or respond to their email messages.
The Automatic Replies feature can do this for us, we can configure Outlook to automatically generate replies to incoming messages when we are unavailable.
The Automatic Replies options are part of the Outlook backstage area, to get there click the File tab, and now click the Automatic Replies button.
The Automatic Replies dialog box opens with most of the options greyed out, they don't become active until we are ready to set automatic replies.
To begin click the Send Automatic Replies radio button.
The bottom section of the dialog box is activated and more options become available.
The "Only send during this time range" check box allows us to specify when we want this message to be sent, today we will not specify a time range so the reply will start going out as soon as we confirm the new settings.
We can see that there are two tabs: one for replies to people in our organization and one for people outside our organization.
Often automatic replies to people with our organization maybe more detailed than those we send to others, let's add a message that will be sent to our coworkers.
Click in the text area and then add a detailed message.
Now let's add a message to senders from outside our organization, we need to move to the outside my organization tab.
Once there we need to make sure the "Auto-reply to people outside my organization" checkbox is marked.
Sending automatic replies to every incoming email can be a potential security risk and allow spammers to verify your email address.
Therefore we will only send the auto-reply to individuals who are listed on our contacts list.
Click the "My Contact only" radio button, this will ensure that the automatic reply will be sent only to people we already know.
It may be a good idea for this automatic reply to be less detailed than the one we sent our coworkers.
To confirm our choices and set the automatic replies click OK.
Until we turn automatic replies off, any of our contacts who send us an email message will receive an automatically generated reply.
In addition, when we open Outlook we will see a message reminding us that this option is on.
Because the automatic replies feature works with the server, it processes messages even when Outlook isn't running, so it isn't necessary to leave Outlook running while we are away.
In addition Outlook is set up to send the auto-reply message one time per recipient.
That means that the first time someone sends us an email they will receive an automatic reply, but if they continue sending additional messages while we are gone no further out of office messages will be sent.
While this option can be changed, it does prevent coworkers from receiving the same message over and over again.
We can turn Automatic Replies off now, while still in the backstage area click Turn Off.
To return to the Inbox, click the blue arrow.
