After reading this article students, faculty, and staff should be able to:
- Create and end an out of office automatic reply on any of the following email clients:
- Office 365
- Outlook for Windows
- Outlook for Mac
- Apple Mail
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 only those inside your organization, we recommend choosing My contacts only.
Office 365
Create automatic reply in Office 365
- Login Office 365 & open the Outlook mail app.
- Click the settings icon.
- Under Settings, click Automatic replies.
- Click the radio dial for Send automatic replies.
- Optionally, click the checkbox for “only send during this time range” and set a date range for your automatic replies. If you do not choose an automatic end time, you will have to manually turn off automatic out of office replies.
- To send replies only to senders inside the organization uncheck the “Also send replies to senders outside my organization” box. If you choose to send replies to senders outside of the organization choose to send to your contact list or all external senders and enter your automatic reply.
- Setup your automatic reply and then click OK.
Manually turn off automatic reply
- Login Office 365 & open the Outlook mail app.
- Click the settings icon.
- Under Settings, click Automatic replies.
- Click the radio dial for Don’t send automatic replies.
Outlook for Windows
Create automatic reply in Outlook for Windows
- Select File > Automatic Replies.
- In the Automatic Replies box, select Send automatic replies.
- Optionally, click the checkbox for “only send during this time range” and set a date range for your automatic replies. If you do not choose an automatic end time, you will have to manually turn off automatic out of office replies.
- On the Inside My Organization tab, type the response that you want to send to teammates or colleagues while you are out of the office.
- Select OK to save your settings.
Manually turn off automatic reply
- Click the File tab, and then click the Info tab in the menu.
- In the Automatic replies section, click on Turn off.
Outlook for Mac
Create automatic reply in Outlook for Mac if you have an Office 365 email account
- On the Tools tab, click Out of Office.
- In the Autoreply Settings box, check the Send automatic replies for account “X” box (where “X” is the account you’d like to send out of office replies from).
- Under Reply once to each sender with, enter your automatic reply.
- 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. If you do not choose an automatic end time, you will have to manually turn off automatic out of office replies.
- To send replies only to senders inside the organization uncheck the “Also send replies to senders outside my organization” box. If you choose to send replies to senders outside of the organization choose to send to your contact list or all external senders and enter your automatic reply.
- Click OK.
Create automatic reply in Outlook for Mac if you have an Gmail email account
- At the bottom left corner of the of the navigation pane, click Mail.
- On the Home tab, click Rules, and select Edit Rules.
- In the Rules box, click Show All.
- In the Outlook Preferences box, under Personal Settings, click Accounts.
- In the Accounts box, in the left pane, click the account.
- To return to the Rules box, click Show All, and then under Email, click Rules.
- In the Rules box, click Add a rule .
- In the Rule name box, type a name for the rule, such as Vacation Reply.
- Under Do the following, click the Change status button, and choose Reply.
- Click Reply Text, and type the automated reply that you want Outlook to send, and click OK.
- In the Rules box, you’ll see the Vacation Reply rule you created.
Manually turn off automatic reply in Outlook for Mac if you have an Office 365 account
- On the Tools tab, click Out of Office.
- In the Autoreply Settings box, uncheck the Send automatic replies for account “X” box (where “X” is the account you’d like to send out of office replies from).
Manually turn off automatic reply in Outlook for Mac if you have a Gmail account
- At the bottom left corner of the of the navigation pane, click Mail.
- On the Home tab, click Rules, and select Edit Rules.
- Uncheck the Automatic reply rule.
Apple Mail
Create automatic reply in Apple Mail
- Launch Mail and navigate to Mail > Preferences > Rules.
- Click Add Rule and give it a description.
- In the first dropdown, select Account and in the dropdown next to it select the email you wish to set up the automatic reply for.
- In the “Perform the following actions” dropdown, select Reply to Message.
- Click Reply message text and enter your automatic reply. Click OK.
- Click Don’t Apply. If you click Apply, your rule will be applied to all your existing messages as well as new messages.
Manually turn off automatic reply in Apple Mail
- Rules in Apple are active by default. To turn off your automatic reply navigate to Mail > Preferences > Rules.
- Uncheck the box next to the automatic reply rule.
Keywords: out of office, automatic replies, Office 365, Outlook, Windows, Mac, Apple Mail, rules
Last Modified: 6/27/2017