Marathonrealty said:
Thank you for your assistance. I attempted to create a rule, however, the
options did not seem to be correct. Apparently, I am not able to use the out
of office assistant because (according to our pc provider) we have a Pop 3
server and not an Exchange Server. Do you know exactly how to do this
without going through the server? Our IT guy came out and set up an
out-of-office reply on the server for one pc in the office; however, it is
required to toggle on or off everyday from the server. Is this the only
option? Please help!
HI,
When you aren't using Exchange server, first create a template with your
out-of-office message. Creating a template is easy, just open a new message
and type your reply, then save the message using the File | Save as menu and
save it as a template. If you're using Word as your email editor, you'll
need to temporarily switch to the Outlook editor to create the template,
using the Tools | Options | Mail Format menu, switching back to Word after
you create the template.
Next, use Rules Wizard to create a rule checking messages as they arrive.
Leave the conditions screen blank if you want to send an autoreply for every
message you receive or set up conditions to limit who receives a reply. In
the next screen, choose "reply using a specific template" and browse to the
template you created earlier. Click Next, setup desired exemptions, click
Next again. After you name the rule, click Finish. You'll need to leave
Outlook open and have it set up to automatically check for new mail for your
autoreply to work.
When you're using Rules wizard, you aren't limited to only OOF replies. For
example, you can set up a rule to reply to specific subject lines and use it
to automate replies to messages requesting information.
Autoreplies are a powerful tool to help you manage you business, but they
aren't without problems and are often despised by other internet users.
Before enabling Out of Office replies, set your mailing list subscriptions
to "nomail", or be prepared to endure flames from other list members. For
security reasons, you should not put your itinerary and date of return in
the message; the information might end in the wrong hands.
(by Diane Poremsky)
