Everyone needs to go on vacation or a business trip from time to time, so it’s helpful to be able to let your email contacts know that you’re not reachable at the moment.
The Most email providers or applications have ways you can handle this automatically, and Outlook 2013 is no exception.
Our Out-of-Office Outlook tutorial below will walk you through how to do this. through the setup process on your computer.
How to set up auto reply in Outlook 2013
- Open Outlook 2013.
- Click the button New email.</li
- Type your away message in the body of the email text box.
- Click the File.
- Click Save As.
- Type a name for the template in the File Name field , moon Then click Save as type, choose Outlook Template, then click Save.
- Click the Home tab, click Rules, then click Manage Rules and Alerts.
- Click the New Rule button.
- Click Apply rule to messages I receive, then click Next.
- Click Next, then click Yes.
- Select the Reply using a specific template, then click A specific template.
- Click Browse. strong>, click User Templates in File System, then select the template you created earlier and click Open.
- Click Click Next. strong>.
- Set any exceptions, then click Next.
- Click the Finish button. li>
Our article continues below with additional information and images for these steps. It’s a bit tricky to set up an automatic reply in Outlook, and there are several places where you can customize some settings, which we’ll cover later in the next section.
If you have a Gmail account and use the Gmail web app, you can also read our setup Gmail out of office tutorial and use that option instead.
Knowing how to set up an out of office reply in Outlook 2013 is important if you have contacts who might send you email. and they need to know that you may not receive the message for a while.
An out of office reply is something that will be sent as soon as an email message arrives in your inbox in Outlook 2013, and the content of the Out of Office reply can include any information you want to convey.
The steps below will show you how to create an Out of Office reply in Outlook 2013 if you have an Outlook 2013 account. email that is not part of an Exchange server.
This includes email addresses hosted by email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, or one of many other similar providers.
Most email providers will also have an out of office reply that you can set up through their web portal, which might be a better option depending on your circumstances. .
Outlook mailing lists can be a great option if you often need to send email to the same large group of people and don’t want to manually enter each individual address as you do so.
How to Create and Enable Out of Office Reply in Outlook 2013 (Picture Guide)
The steps below will show you how to make and enable an Out of Office Reply in Microsoft Office 2013 version from Outlook.
When someone sends you an email, Outlook will automatically send replies with the out-of-office message you create. Please note that Outlook 2013 will need to be open for this to work. If you can’t leave Outlook 2013 open for the entire time you’ll be out of the office, you’re better off setting up the out-of-office reply directly through your email host.
The links below will show you how to set up an out of office reply for some of the most popular email providers if you can’t leave your computer and Outlook 2013 up and running during your entire absence.
- How to set up an out of office reply Out of Office Reply for Gmail Accounts
- How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply for Yahoo Accounts
- How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply for Outlook Accounts .com
The steps below will show you how to create an out of office reply in Outlook 2013 if you don’t have an Exchange Server account and are using an IMAP or POP3 account. If you have Exchange, you can create an out of office reply or other automatic Office responses by going to File > Info > Automatic Replies.
Step 1: Open Outlook 2013 .
Step 2: Click the New Email button.
Step 3: Type your away message in the body of the email text box.
Step 4: Click File at the top left of the window.
Step 5: Click Save As.
Step 6: Type a name for the template in the File Name field, then click the Save as type drop-down menu, choose Outlook Template, then click the Save button.
Step 7: Click the Home tab at the bottom of the top of the window, click Rules in the Move section of the ribbon, then click the Manage Rules and Alerts button.
Step 8: Click the New Rule button.
Step 9: Click the Apply rule to messages I receive and then click Next.
Step 9 – Click the Next button, unless you only want to send the Out of Office response under certain conditions. If you did not select any options, click the Yes button to confirm that you want this rule to apply to all messages you receive.
Step 10 – Select the check box to the left of the Reply using a specific template option, then click the A specific template option at the bottom of the window.
Step 11 : Click the Browse dropdown menu, click the User Templates in File System option, then select the template you created earlier and click the Open button.
Step 12: Click the Next button.
Step 13: Set any exceptions you want clicking the check box to the left of each of those options, then click the Next button.
Step 14: Click the Finish button to complete the setup of the out of office message and start automatically sending replies.
Now that you know how to set up an Outlook 2013 out of office reply you can use this when you go on vacation and want to let your outside contacts and colleagues know when you’ll be back to return their emails.
As mentioned above, your computer must be on, and Outlook 2013 must be open for this to work.
If your computer is set to sleep or hibernate after a certain period of inactivity, then this method of sending an out of office reply message in Outlook 2013 will not work.
When you return from being out from the office, you can disable this rule in Rules > Manage rules and alerts (where we were in step 7 above) then click the box to the left of the rule to remove the check mark. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to specify a start time or end time with this autoreply method.
If you’ve been having trouble finding some of the formatting options in Outlook, you can refer to our guide on how to strikethrough in Microsoft Outlook for some tips.
Additional notes on using the autoresponder in Microsoft Outlook
- It’s generally a good idea to include a a start time and an end time in your out-of-office reply so your email contacts know approximately when they should expect to hear from you.
- If you have access to a web-based version of your email account, such as an Outlook web account or Gmail, then you’d better use it to send your out-of-office reply. Both email providers have a dedicated vacation reply option where you can automate this a bit better, even letting you choose a date range for when you won’t be available.
- The Rules dialog can be used to much more than an out-of-office response. I can use it to generate different responses for people outside my organization or people within my organization, and I can automatically filter emails based on subject or sender.
- The guide above is meant to help you create a office reply list if you do not have an Exchange account. If you have one, then this whole process is much simpler. There’s an out of office wizard in the File tab where you can set up automatic responses and even specify a time range for those responses. The autoresponder window also has a separate organization tab for Outside my organization and Inside my organization contacts so you can adjust each response message separately.
Want Outlook 2013 to check for new messages more often? Adjust the send and receive settings in Outlook 2013 to check for new messages as often as you want.
Out of Office FAQ in Outlook 2013
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