Out of Office Assistant is an available feature only if you connect to Microsoft Exchange Server as your mail server. If you don't use Exchange Server, you can use Outlook Rules Wizard or one of the third-party automatic rules processing addins. See http://www.slipstick.com/rules/index.htm and http://www.slipstick.com/addins/index.htm .
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Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers