How to Activate Outlook Automatic Responses ‘Out of Office’?

Microsoft Outlook is the most popular email client among businesses. It is designed to harden several important Office applications, thus saving you time. One way to save time is through the automatic responses for when you are out of the office. If you want to know how to activate it, you will see it here.

How to configure an automatic reply to notify that you are absent?

Outlook is well known for receive and send emails, but it also allows you to store contact names and numbers, manage your calendar and keep track of your tasks. Another thing it allows you to do is create an automatic reply message, it contains a precise text with the most important information you want to convey.

To configure an automatic response you must be inside Microsoft Outlook, choose the File that is generally in the upper left part of the screen, then you must go to Automatic responses, then click on Send automatic responses.

There you will see a tab called Within my organization, It is in that space where you will write the answer you want to send while you are not in the office.

For contacts from the same organization

In the Automatic responses section you can choose the type of response that will be given to two groups of people, those who belong to the organization and to those who do not belong. Once the option of the same organization has been selected, you must write a message where you can let them know that you are just working, without fail you will attend to their message.

For contacts outside the organization

To set your answer to people or contacts outside your company or company you just have to select the option Outside my organization in the automatic responses section. You can let them that you are not working and that you are disconnected for a few days. But if they need immediate attention, you can give them a way to contact you by other means.

What are the aspects that can be customized for the messages?

To personalize your messages, Outlook It offers you many options that allow you to have a unique and striking message. If you need to activate automatic replies for friends because you will be busy, or if you need to do it for business reasons because you will not be in the office, you will always find details that you will like.

One of these aspects is the delivery option, in it you can establish the degree of relevance of the message, the expiration date and detail the delay of date and time for message delivery.

You can also change the appearance of the message, since this option gives you at least eight ways to set the appearance of the message. Among which is: a texture, a gradient, color, an image and a background pattern. You can also customize the font, add a list, a table and even a signature.

Time interval in which they are sent

When automatic replies are configured, Outlook gives you the option to activate it by a specific time or until you manually disable it. The first works for you when you know how long you will not be available and you can set the date and time when these responses will be activated and when it will expire.

The option to activate and deactivate manually, can be useful if you do not know how long you will be out of reach of your colleagues or friends. Like Outlook manage your calendar too It gives you to choose if you block your calendar, while the automatic responses are active.

The content of the message

The most important thing is the message, since this must be respectful and eloquent. In it you can say the reason for your absence and what they can do in alternative, either wait, provide your phone number in case of emergency …

But if you also want to customize it, you have the following choices: italics, bold, size, font color and type, underline, highlight. You can use bullets and set the orientation of the text.

How are automatic replies turned off?

It is very simple if you take into account that you could activate it, you just have to enter your email account, go to settings, then to automatic responses and select don’t send automatic replies. This you need to do if you activated this mode manually, otherwise it will remain active even when you are already available to others.