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Out-of-office writer
Most auto-replies say too much ("I'm on holiday in Portugal") or too little ("back next week", to someone reading it next week). Pick your dates and who covers, and get a reply with the day you'll answer, one contact, and a shorter version for people you don't know.
Try:
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Your out-of-office reply
Subject
For contacts and colleagues
Short, for people outsideno names, no phone, no reason
Gmailcomputer; the app has it under Settings › your account
Outlooknew Outlook and Outlook on the web
How it writes the reply
- The date with the weekday, and the first day you'll answer, not the last day away. Left blank, it takes the first weekday after your last day away; public holidays are yours to check.
- One place to go meanwhile. A shared address (orders@, help@) is better than a colleague's own: the short version shows only the address, never a name or a phone number.
- Nothing about why or where. If the urgent line mentions a holiday, a trip or the house, it says so: out-of-office replies are a known source for invoice fraud, and a stranger doesn't need to know the desk is empty.
- Contacts only. The steps tick "Only send a response to people in my Contacts" in Gmail and "Send replies only to contacts" in Outlook, so newsletters, no-reply senders and other auto-replies get nothing.
- How often it answers the same person: Gmail replies again after 4 days, so someone who writes every day of a 14-day absence gets 4 replies; Outlook answers each sender once per absence.
Who should get a reply, the headers that keep it away from mailing lists, and what to leave out: The out-of-office reply: what it should say, and why it should not answer every newsletter.
A shared address for while you're away
An email59 mailbox is a second address you can hand to whoever covers, so the cover address isn't anyone's own inbox.