Out of Office for All (Experience level 2.5)
If you use Microsoft Outlook in an environment that uses an Exchange server, you are familiar with the ‘Out of Office Agent’. This handy ‘robot’ replies to senders with a message of your choosing, such as: “I’m out until next Tuesday and will reply to your email then.”
To provide equality for all . . . here’s one way to send these types of messages to those outside your Exchange environment (No, these messages are not reliably sent to people outside your Exchange ‘circle’) or from Outlook Inboxes not using Exchange.
(** in order to do this Word can not be used as your email editor. To check or change this before you proceed, go to Tools\Options\Mail Format and uncheck the Use Word to edit email box. This can be reenabled after you’re done. These instructions are specifically for Microsoft Office 2003, but it works similarly in other versions of Office. This will also only work if your Computer is on, logged on and Outlook is set to Send & Receive automatically )
To provide equality for all . . . here’s one way to send these types of messages to those outside your Exchange environment (No, these messages are not reliably sent to people outside your Exchange ‘circle’) or from Outlook Inboxes not using Exchange.
(** in order to do this Word can not be used as your email editor. To check or change this before you proceed, go to Tools\Options\Mail Format and uncheck the Use Word to edit email box. This can be reenabled after you’re done. These instructions are specifically for Microsoft Office 2003, but it works similarly in other versions of Office. This will also only work if your Computer is on, logged on and Outlook is set to Send & Receive automatically )
- Open the Inbox folder
- On the Actions menu, point to New Mail Using and click Plain Text
- Type a subject line, such as "Out of the office."
- Type the message content you want to present to people sending you e-mail while you're out
- On the File menu, click Save As
- In the Save As Type box, select Outlook Template
- Type the name for the file (if you don't like the one derived from your subject line) and click Save
- On the File menu, click Close
- When asked if you want to save file, click No
- On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts
- Click New Rule
- Click to select the option Start From A Blank Rule
- Under Which Type Of Rule Do You Want To Create?, select Check Messages When They Arrive, Next
- Under Which Condition(s) Do You Want To Check?, select Sender is in a specific Address (it will also enable this machine only), and then click Next
(These steps ensure that you are not sending this message to Spammers or people you don’t intend. It also assumes that you keep your Outlook address book fairly up to date.)
- Click the link word specific and choose ‘Contacts’ and then click Next
- Under What Do You Want To Do With The Message? select Reply Using a Specific Template
- Under Rule Description, click the underlined words A Specific Template
- In the Select A Reply Template dialog box, select User Templates In File System in the Look In list
- Select the template that you created and click Open
- Click Finish. Rule is automatically named "sent only to me" and is enabled (notice the check mark)
- Optionally, click Rename, type a new name for the rule, such as “Universal Out of Office”, and click OK
- Try sending yourself a message to test the rule.
Tip: Be sure to disable this rule after testing it. On the Tools menu, click Rules Wizard and clear the check box next to the name of the rule you just created. Also, you may want to set a reminder to turn this rule off as it won’t know when you return.
