How to Set an Automated Reply in Outlook?

How to Set an Automated Reply in Outlook?

Outlook is undoubtedly among the most trusted and popular email clients. Whether you have professional email management requirements or personal ones, you can set up an account on Outlook and manage your multiple email accounts quite easily. While there are many useful features of having an account on Outlook, users often wonder how to set out of office Outlook so that they can acknowledge an email while they are not available for replying to that email physically. By setting out of office in Outlook, you can ensure that your absence is informed to the email sender.

Read on to explore the process of setting up out of office in Outlook and gather some valuable insights into using this feature in a smooth way.

What is Outlook Out of Office?

Before we discuss how to set out of office in Outlook, let’s understand what the feature is all about. The “out of office” feature in MS Outlook allows you to set an automated reply message if you will not be available for replying to any incoming email. This is especially useful when you work in an organization and use Outlook as the primary email communication platform. You can mark your absence in Outlook and set a reply which will be triggered to anyone who sends you an email in your absence.

Users who are not aware of the out of office feature often wonder how to block someone on Outlook so that they can stop receiving emails in their absence.

Stepwise Process to Set Out of Office

Now that you are aware of what out of office in Outlook is, read on to explore the series of steps involved in the process. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Launch MS Outlook on your computer.
  2. Click on “File” on the top-left corner of the Outlook window.
  3. Select “Automatic Replies” and in the “Automatic Replies” box, click on “Send automatic replies”.
  4. Click on the “Inside My Organization” tab and type the message which you want to set as the Outlook out of office message.
  5. Click on “OK” to save the changes.

Once you complete the series of steps mentioned above, anyone who sends you an email will receive the reply that you’ve set while configuring the Out of Office feature in MS Outlook. Users often unblock email Outlook after blocking someone in order to  start receiving emails from whom they blocked once. However, as discussed earlier, you don’t really have to block anyone if you aren’t available for replying to emails in Outlook. You can simply set out of office and ensure that anyone who sends you an email in your absence receives a response stating the reason for your unavailability.