Out-of-Office Email Message

Owned by Moffat, Ethan
Last updated: Jun 24, 2014

The Out-of-Office Message is an effective way to alert people who send email messages that you may not respond immediately. Within the SPU campus Microsoft Exchange system, you can set your out-of-office reply from within Outlook 2010/2013 and from Webmail.

The Out-of-Office reply is sent as an automated response to the email addresses of any on-campus or off-campus sender.

Configure Automatic Replies

To set up an Out-of-Office automatic reply in Outlook 2013:

  1. Open the File menu
  2. Click the Automatic Replies button
  3. Click the Send Automatic Replies radio button in the new dialog that appears
  4. Add any message text that should be sent in response to emails received while the automatic reply is enabled
  5. Click OK to save changes and return to the main Outlook window.

To set up an Out-of-Office automatic reply in Webmail:

  1. Click the Settings Icon (gear image) at the top-right of the web page next to your name
  2. Click the Set Automatic Replices option that appears in the list
  3. Follow steps 3-5 listed above to complete setting up an automatic reply

Some off-campus distribution lists don't handle out-of-office messages in the same manner. The list owners sometimes prefer that you unsubscribe to a specific list to avoid unwanted out-of-office messages from being sent to the entire list, or to list posters. Check the with list manager for assistance with this problem.

Exchange keeps track of who has received out-of-office automatic replies and doesn't keep sending the message if it has already been sent.