Outlook: Out of Office Tip

Background: Outlook has a feature called the “Out of Office Assistant”. With the Out of Office Assistant, you can send an automatic reply to incoming e-mail when you are away. Away being; on vacation, at an off-site meeting, tied up in a on-site all day meeting, or just about any time you will not be responding to e-mails for an extended period of time.

Depending on my situation, I use a different Out of Office reply. For example, if I am on vacation, I may use:

I will be on vacation starting Friday afternoon, June 22 returning Monday, July 2. I will not have access to e-mail or voice mail. If your request requires immediate attention, please contact John Smith at extension 1234.

If I am attending an all day meeting, I may use something slightly different. If I am attending a week long conference, again, something different. If I am out of the office but planning to check e-mail in the evenings, I change my Out of Office message to reflect that I will not be responding to e-mails until later in the evening.

Today’s tip: Keep a simple document with your different Out of Office messages. It’s a quick, simple thing you can do to avoid having to conjure up a new Out of Office message each and every time you need one. I have a simple document called o-o-o.doc (clever, eh?) that contains 9 different Out of Office messages covering just about any scenario.

The other neat thing I do is to “borrow” someone else’s well written Out of Office message for my own use. Every once in a while, I get a cleverly crafted Out of Office message from someone that I like and save it in my o-o-o.doc to use later.

No more reinventing your Out of Office messages again and again. Keep a simple document with your Out of Office “best of” messages just a copy and paste away!