Microsoft Outlook - How to setup an out of office message (auto reply)

You can setup your own Out Of Office reply message. Corporate users of Microsoft Exchange have an Out Of Office assistant feature that is not available in home and small business versions of Outlook.

With a few easy to follow steps, you can setup an automatic response, or autoreponse, to incoming mail messages while you are away.

You simply create a reply message, called a template to cover your situation. Usually your automatic response tells the original message sender that you are out of the office, when you will return, and often who to call in an emergency. The content of the reply message is completely up to you.

You set up a rule that defines what messages will receive an automatic response and under what conditions. Turn on the rule when you leave your PC. Then you can relax while you are away, know that incoming messages are being handled by your "automatic" personal assistant. Turn off the rule when you return and are ready to face all those messages!

For the automatic messaging process to work, your PC must be left on, and Outlook open and running. This necessary so that Outlook can monitor incoming messages, apply the rule to all messages and send out your automatic reply as you instructed.

Either the PC and Outlook need to be running 24x7, or you need to have a delegate that can turn off your PC at night and back on in the morning.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 is used for this explanation, but the process is similar in earlier versions of Outlook.

Creating you response is a simple three step process. Follow along with the screen shots that are below.

1. Select New > Mail Message from from the menu.
2. Create the message form you want to send. Include a subject and message. Leave the To field blank for Outlook to fill in when needed.
3. Save the message form as a message template (save as).
   

Outlook supplies a Wizard to guide you through the simple steps to create the rule for Outlook to follow to properly send your Out Of Office message.

1. Select Tools and then Rules and Alerts.
2. Select New Rule
3. Start from a blank rule > Check messages when they arrive
   
4. Set the conditions to check. Usually you will select "where my name is in the To or Cc box"
5. Next define what to do with the message; select "reply using a specific template."
6. Click on "a specific template" at the bottom of the window and select and open your template.
7. Define any exceptions.
8. Give your new rule a name, turn and save it. Do not turn it on unless you want it to start working immediately.

The rule and your message template are there for you when you are ready. Simply turn on the rule when you are ready to leave and let Outlook take over.

You can use rules for other neat things, like automatically moving certain messages into special folders in Outlook. This helps to gather messages from certain senders, and gets them out of your Inbox.

It is possible that your Internet mail provider may also offer an autoresponder service.

There are some things you can do to keep your Outlook information, and your Outlook pst file in top notch shape:

• Setup an automatic backup of your Outlook information.
  
• Use the Outlook utility, Scanpst, to scan and fix some errors that creep into your Outlook pst file.
  
• Clean house periodically. The leaner your pst file, the safer your data. Dump your trash. Delete useless old mail.
  
• Move saved email out of outlook, and into windows file folders. This way you can save old stuff, but get it out of your Outlook pst file.
• Copy your Outlook Contacts to your webmail, to Outlook on another PC, or to a database.
  
• Set your archive options to move important but old stuff into a separate pst file.

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