How to Use Out of Office Assistant or Send Automatic Replies in Outlook

The out of office assistant in Outlook works differently in Outlook Exchange accounts and non-exchange accounts like POP3, IMAP. In this article, let us see how to use and how to turn on the out of Office assistant in both these cases.

How to find out if you have an Exchange Account

First of all we’ve to find out what kind of Outlook account you have.

For Outlook 2007 and above, check the status bar. If it says ‘Connected to Exchange’, it means you have an exchange account.

For Outlook 2003, go to Tools menu > Email accounts > View or Change Existing Email Accounts and check the type of account you have.

After you have found the type of account you’re using, refer the appropriate section explained below to learn how to use the out of office assistant.

Turn ON Out of Office Assistant or automatic replies in Exchange account

1. Open Outlook and click on File > Info
2. Click Automatic Replies (Out of Office)
3. In the dialogue box that opens, check the box next to Send Automatic Replies
4. Select ‘Only send during this time range’ if you want automatic replies to be sent when you are out of office and set the Start and End Time
5. Type appropriate messages to send Inside the organization and Outside the organization
6. These automatic replies will be sent during specific dates set in Step 4. If that is not selected, automatic replies will continue to be sent immediately until you disable it.

Turn ON Out of Office Assistant or automatic replies in other accounts

Open Outlook and click on File > Info. In this section, if you see an Automatic Reply button, please click on it and follow the steps listed above to set it up. However, if you don’t see an Automatic Reply button, then you will have to make use of rules to send emails automatically explained below.

1. Click on Compose to create a new email
2. Enter a subject line and body of your out of office email template
3. Select File > Save As
4. Choose a name and save the created file as an Outlook template (*.oft)
5. Now that you have an out of office template set up, you are ready to create rules for the same.
6. Click on File > Manage Rules & Alerts
7. In the dialogue box, click on New Rule in the Email rules section
8. Click on ‘Apple
9.  rule on messages I receive’ and hit Next
10. Select Action as ‘reply using a specific template’ under ‘What do you want to do with this message’ Step 1
11. In Step 2, Edit the rule application, click on the underlined text for a specific template
12. Select User Templates in File System in the Look In box at the top of Select a Reply Template
13. Choose the template you created and hit Next
14. Assign a name for your template and check the box ‘TURN ON THIS RULE’ when you want to use out of office.

Using these steps, you can easily set up out of office assistant in your Outlook and send automatic replies.

Repair issues with Outlook

Although Outlook is an extremely useful tool and in most cases a reliable one, one may face issues occasionally. Outlook stopping or freezing frequently, unable to send emails or Outlook not responding when sending emails are common issues one may encounter. These issues usually happen when the PST file is corrupt and can be repaired when the file is fixed.