How to turn Out-of-Office replies on or off in Outlook for Windows

Synopsis

This article shows how to turn out-of-office automatic replies on or off for your Exchange account using Outlook.

Prerequisite

  • A Sherweb hosted Exchange account
  • The Outlook client is installed and configured for your Exchange account

 

Note: If the Automatic Replies (Out of Office) option is not available, you are not using an Exchange account.

How to

1. In Outlook, from the main window, click on the File menu. Click on Automatic Replies.


 

2. In the Automatic Replies window, click on Send automatic replies. 


 

3. If you would like the replies to be sent for a limited period of time, set the dates in the Start time and End time fields. 


 

4. Now edit the email template for the replies to your colleagues under the Inside My Organization tab. 


 

5. You can choose to activate the out-of-office automatic replies for your external contacts too. Click on the Outside My Organization tab and check the option Auto-reply to people outside my organization.

If you want to send the replies only to people in your contacts list, select My Contacts only. Otherwise, let the default option selected (Anyone outside my organization).


 

6. Click on OK to close the Automatic Replies window.


Note: Whenever you open your Outlook 2013 client while your out-of-office settings are active, a reminder will be displayed indicating that "Automatic replies are being sent for this account" with a button to turn them off. 

 

Turn the Out-of-Office automatic replies off

If you defined start and end dates, there is no need to manually turn off the automatic replies. The system will do it for you.

 

If, however, you have defined start and end dates, but would like to turn off Out-of-Office before it's scheduled end date, follow steps 1 and 2 of this guide. In step 2, select Do not send automatic replies and then OK.

 

If you did not define start and end dates, you can manually turn off your current out-of-office settings. From the main Outlook window, click on File, then on the Turn Off button under the Automatic Replies highlighted section.

 

Should you need any further help, do not hesitate to contact us.

Applicable to

All Sherweb hosted Exchange accounts