Setting An Out Of Office Reply That Actually Helps The Sender
Most auto-replies tell people nothing they can use. Three lines fix that.
In short: set an out of office with an end date so it turns itself off, name a contact rather than yourself, and leave out travel details. Set your 3CX status too, because an out of office on email means nothing to a ringing phone.
A bad out of office reply says you are away and nothing else, which leaves the sender exactly where they started. A good one takes thirty seconds longer to write and prevents a queue of unanswered mail.
Here is the format and the settings that matter.
The Three Lines That Matter
When you are back. A date, not “shortly”. Senders make decisions with dates.
Whether you are reading anything. Say so plainly. “I am not checking email” is more useful and more honest than implying you might reply.
Who to contact instead, with a name and an address or a number. This is the line most people leave out and it is the only one that actually solves the sender’s problem.
For anything client-facing, add the office line: 678-374-4352. Somebody always has an emergency.
Internal Versus External
Microsoft 365 lets you send a different message inside and outside the business. Use it. Colleagues need the detail; customers need the courtesy.
The external reply can be limited to contacts only. That is worth doing, because a public auto-reply confirms to a spammer that the address is live.
Set the start and end dates rather than turning it on and off by hand. Auto-replies left running for a week after somebody returns are a small but reliable embarrassment.
The One Nobody Sets
If you are away for a while, set the same thing on your phone extension. A voicemail greeting that still says “I will get back to you today” while you are on a beach undoes the careful email you wrote.
Ask the help desk to redirect the extension to a colleague for the period. It takes a minute.
And tell the person you named. Being volunteered by an auto-reply is a poor way to find out.
When The Absence Is Not Planned
Holiday replies are easy because you see the trip coming. A sudden illness or family emergency is different, and the mailbox fills while senders assume you are reading it.
The Outlook app on your phone can switch on automatic replies from your account settings in about a minute. If even that is too much, your manager can call the help desk and ask for an out of office to be set for you.
Out Of Office Mistakes That Still Leave People Waiting
Forgetting the shared mailboxes you answer is easy to do. Your personal out of office does not reply on behalf of an accounts or inquiries inbox, so agree who watches those while you are away.
Building the reply as an Outlook rule instead of using Automatic Replies is an older habit that fails quietly. Some rules only run while Outlook is open on your computer, so the replies stop the moment the laptop is shut.
Leaving your calendar looking free invites meetings you cannot attend. Outlook on the web can block the time and decline new invitations for the dates of your out of office, which saves the organizer chasing you.
Naming a colleague who is also on leave sends senders round in a circle. Check their dates before you put their name in the message.
When An Out Of Office Needs A Call
If your automatic reply switches on, changes wording or names a different contact without you touching it, treat that as a sign someone else may be in your account. Call 678-374-4352 and choose option 1 for the security line, answered 24/7.
Replies that keep firing after you turned them off, or settings that will not save, are a job for the help desk, open Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern. Over a weekend, log a ticket and it is picked up when the desk opens.
Always Set An End Date
The single most useful setting is the one people skip. Give the out of office a start and an end date and it turns itself off, which means you never come back to a week of clients being told you are away while you sit at your desk answering them.
It also means you cannot forget to set it if you enter the dates when you book the leave rather than on the morning you go.
The second most useful habit is writing a separate message for external senders. Internal colleagues need different information from clients, and Microsoft 365 lets you write both.
For internal, be specific. Who is covering, where the handover notes are, what to do about the thing you were in the middle of. For external, be brief and useful. Away until this date, contact this person, here is their email.
Out Of Office Messages Are Read By Attackers Too
An automatic reply goes to anyone who emails you, including people who emailed you specifically to see what comes back. It is a genuinely useful reconnaissance tool and worth thirty seconds of thought.
Do not name the client or the matter you are away for. Do not describe your travel. Do not say the office is closed all week with nobody in.
Be careful about naming a colleague as covering for finance or payments. An attacker now knows exactly who to send a fake invoice to and exactly why that person will be busy and less careful than usual. This is a well documented pattern around holidays.
Naming a general address rather than an individual solves most of it. Contact our accounts team at this address is just as helpful to a client and considerably less helpful to anyone else.
And your mobile number in an out of office reaches every mailing list you are on, forever.
Cover The Phone, Not Just The Mailbox
Half of an out of office is the part most people never do, which is the phone. An email reply telling clients you are away is undermined by an extension ringing out unanswered.
In the 3CX apps you can set your status to Away or Out of Office, and in most configurations that status can change your call routing automatically. Calls can go to a colleague, to a shared queue, or to voicemail immediately rather than after thirty seconds of ringing.
If you are away for more than a couple of days, re-record your voicemail greeting to say so and to name an alternative. A greeting that says you will call back today when you will not is worse than no greeting.
If you want your extension forwarded to a specific colleague while you are away, that is a small change and we can set it up in advance so it switches on with your dates.
Coming Back Well
The return is where the value of a good out of office is either realized or thrown away.
Turn the reply off before you start answering, or people receive an automated away message and a personal reply to the same email, which looks careless.
Deal with the handover first. Whoever covered for you knows what happened while you were away, and ten minutes with them is worth an hour of reading email backwards.
Work oldest first for anything client facing. The person who wrote on day one has been waiting longest and is most likely to have escalated somewhere.
And note anything that only you could handle. If your absence blocked something for a week, that is a process problem worth fixing before the next holiday rather than a personal failing.
Related Guides And What To Have Ready
Related: recovering a deleted email, recalling an email, and using your work phone away from the office if you are half working while away. More in Email and Microsoft 365.
If you want your phone and your email handled together while you are away, tell us the dates, who is covering, and whether calls should go to that person or to voicemail.
Call 678-374-4352 and we will set it to switch on and off with your dates.
Microsoft’s own instructions for automatic replies are here: Send automatic out of office replies from Outlook.
An Out Of Office Checklist
Sixty seconds before you leave, and it saves your colleagues a week of guessing.
- Set a start and an end date so the out of office turns itself off.
- Write a separate message for external senders.
- Name who to contact, with their email address.
- Say when you will respond on your return.
- Leave out travel plans, locations and client names.
- Do not name the person covering finance or payments individually.
- Do not include your mobile number unless you mean it.
- Set your 3CX presence as well as the email out of office.
- Re-record your voicemail greeting if you are away more than a couple of days.
- Turn the out of office off before you start answering on your return.
Line six is the one nobody thinks about, and it is the one attackers read.
Out Of Office And Coverage In Your Industry
What needs covering while you are away depends on what cannot wait.
Law firms. Deadlines do not pause. An out of office at a firm needs a named person who can actually act, not just acknowledge, and the phone needs covering as well as the mailbox.
Distribution and logistics. Orders keep arriving. The out of office should point at the desk rather than an individual, so nothing waits for one person to return from leave.
Manufacturing. Supplier and contractor queries continue regardless. Pointing the out of office at a shared address means a delivery question does not sit unread for two weeks.
If you want your phone and email covered together with your dates, tell us and we will set it. Call 678-374-4352.
Questions About Your Out Of Office Reply
Yes, and you should.
Limit the external reply to contacts only.
Yes. Set start and end dates so it turns itself off.
Set the voicemail greeting too, or ask us to redirect the extension.