Outlook: Creating Out of Office / vacation replies using rules

Contributed by risherz July 20, 2006  
Tagged: Microsoft Outlook

Usually you need something known as an Exchanger server account in order for you to get the ‘Out of Office Assistant’ in Outlook. However, most of us won’t probably have that. That’s why here’s a sly way that all can use to notify people that they aren’t at home.

Perfect for the holiday season, or when you will be out of town and or out of the office for a while. However, keep in mind that if you are using an e-mail service like Gmail or Yahoo etc. this won’t be of much use since you can find the vacation response setting usually in the ‘Settings / Options’ section of your e-mail page. But this is extremely if you don’t have such options.

The first thing that we have to do is create a template that outlook is going to automatically use while replying to all incoming e-mail when you turn on the rule. To do that all you do is:
1. Make sure you aren’t using word as your editor because if you are then you won’t be able to create a outlook template (.oft file). So Tools > Options… > Mail Format tab > Uncheck the check box beside “Use Microsoft Office Word to edit e-mail messages”.
2. Then click on the New button and create a message which looks something like “I’m not here right now… blah blah blah”. Just fill in the content, don’t worry about the recipient… subject etc. because when outlook replied it automatically adds RE: to the sender’s subject etc.
3. After that save the file as a .oft template… make sure you give it a name you remember.
4. Now it’s time to create the actual rule.
5. In order to create a rule you need to go to Tools > Rules and Alerts… > New Rule… > Select ‘Start from a blank rule’.
6. Now we need to use our brains… first select ‘Check messages when they arrive’ and click on Next. Then select the option that says where my name is in the to box… feel free to explore the other options then click on next. Remember the main idea is to reply back to the message using the template.
7. Then select ‘reply using a specific template’ and click the blue ‘a specific template text’. Then where it says ‘Look in:’ at the top of the screen select ‘User templates in File system’ select the template that you had created previously and click on ‘Open’.
8. After click on Next, the next step is to specify the exclusions, in this list select except if from people or distribution list and click on the blue text that says ‘people or distribution list’. Here’s where you need to add the addresses of newsletters that you subscribe to etc… you don’t want to accidentally reply to a mailing list that you like and get your account removed from the list (because sometimes that’s the way to unsubscribe yourself in certain mailing lists).
9. Finally just give a name for the rule… make sure to uncheck turn on this rule… unless of course you are going on vacation or something already.

Now everytime you want to create an out of office reply, just go to Tools > Rules and Alerts… > select your rule and click on apply and then merrily enjoy your holidays, without having to worry about getting a reputation of not replying back to e-mail. Oh yeah and one more thing… make sure you keep your computer on and outlook running on as well, that’s the only disadvantage because other wise if outlook can’t send and receive.. Then obviously the other person won’t get an Out of office reply when it is really necessary.