Email: Set Up an Out of Office/Auto-reply/Vacation Message

Overview

Follow the steps below to specify the text for automatic replies to email messages when you are out of the office. Outlook will only reply once to any given sender for each period when an auto-reply is enabled. If the sender sends you another email, they will not get another auto-reply. You can turn on automatic replies permanently or during a certain period and set up two separate messages to people inside or outside of the university.

• Outlook for Windows
• Outlook for Mac
• Outlook on the Web
• Google Gmail

How To

Outlook for Windows

1. Select File > Automatic Replies.
2. In the Automatic Replies box, select Send automatic replies. 
   Optionally, set a date range for your automatic replies. This will turn off automatic replies at the date and time you enter for the end time. Otherwise, you'll need to turn off automatic replies manually. 
3. On the Inside My Organization tab, type the response that you want to send to colleagues while you are out of the office.
   Note: Sending automatic replies to anyone outside my organization will send your automatic reply to every email, including newsletters, advertisements, and potentially, junk email. If you want to send automatic replies to those outside your organization, we recommend choosing My contacts only.
4. Select OK to save your settings.

Outlook for Mac

1. Go to the Mail view in Outlook. 
2. On the Tools tab, click Out of Office.
3. In the Autoreply Settings box select the account on the left you want to set up the out of office reply, check the Send automatic replies for account "X" box (where "X" is the account you'd like to send out of office replies from).
4. Under Reply once to each sender with, enter your automatic reply.
5. To set the start and end dates, select the Only send replies during this time period check box, and enter the start and end dates and times.
   Note: When you check this box and set start and end dates and times, your out of office replies will turn off automatically when the end date and time occurs.
6. To set options for replying to people outside your organization (if it is enabled by your Exchange administrator), check the Also send replies to senders outside my organization box, select Send to all external senders, and under Reply once to each external sender with, enter your automatic reply.
7. Click OK.

Outlook on the Web

1. Sign into Outlook on the Web.
2. In the App Launcher, choose Outlook.
3. At the top of the page, select Settings the setting gear.
4. Select Mail under Your app settings.  
5. Select Mail > Automatic Processing > Automatic replies on the left.
6. Customize your automatic reply.
7. Choose Save.

Google Gmail

1. On your computer, open Gmail.
2. In the top right, click the Settings gear > See all settings.
3. Scroll down to the "Vacation responder" section.
4. Select Vacation responder on.
5. Fill in the date range, subject, and message.
6. Under your message, check the box if you only want your contacts to see your vacation reply.
7. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

Note: If you have a Gmail signature, it will be shown at the bottom of your vacation response.