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How To Set Up A Vacation Message In Outlook
These instructions will only be useful to a person who is using Microsoft Outlook and is using a broadband connection to the Internet and who has enabled auto send and receive.
When our office goes on vacation, we set up a special message in Outlook using rules to identify any mail sent to our personal addresses and to trigger a return message to the sender that let's them know when we will return and that we have received their note automatically. How? We'll take you through the instructions for Outlook 2003 step-by-step.
First you will need to make a vacation message for your template file and save it as an .oft file. Here's how:
- Go to Windows Explorer and then Documents and Settings. Then your User Name and Application Data.
- Go to Microsoft and then select the Templates file. You now know the path where you will put your new vacation template.
- Open Notepad or Word pad and create a text file with your vacation message. Save it as a .oft ending as a text document, and using Windows Explorer, put this file in the Template directory that we found above.
Now to set up the rule to send the vacation message.
- Open Outlook and click Tools, and then Rules and Alerts.
- Click the New Rule button, and then click the radio button "Start from a blank rule".
- Highlight step one "check messages when they arrive".
- Highlight step two "apply this rule after the message arrives" click next.
- Check in the radio box "sent only to me" click next.
- Check the box next to "reply using a specific template".
- Select with the drop down arrow, the user template that you created with your vacation message in it. Click Open. You should now see the path to the template in the step 2 screen.
- Click next and then finish.
- Make sure on your return that you delete this rule, or your vacation message will continue to be sent out.