Create a vacation notice in Outlook - Here's how

Set vacation notice: In Microsoft Outlook, you can automatically reply to incoming e-mails with a vacation notice if you are unavailable for a long time. We'll show you two ways to set up vacation notices.

1. Outlook: Quick to the vacation note via "Automatic replies"

If you want to set up an out-of-office note in Outlook without any special rules, this can be done quite quickly via "Automatic replies". The following instructions work with all current Outlook versions.

1. Start Outlook and click on the "File" tab in the top left.
2. Under the "Account information" click on the "Automatic replies" button.
3. Here you can select the period in which the absence notification is sent. To do this, activate the "Send automatic replies" option and set the start and end dates. If you do not enter anything here, the auto reply will be sent immediately and "forever".
4. If you use Outlook for business, it also makes sense to create a somewhat more relaxed absence report for your colleagues ("Inside my organization") and a more formal one for business contacts ("Outside my organization").
5. In the text you should indicate the end date of your vacation or your absence. It is also a good idea to appoint a representative for business leave notes that your contact can contact for urgent matters.
6. With "OK" you confirm the vacation notice. All mails from the start time will now be answered with the text you have entered.

Sample text for out of office notes

• You can formulate your notice of absence according to the scheme on the screenshot.
• In our picture gallery you will also find other templates for vacation notes.

2. Define Outlook vacation notice as a rule

You can also use a rule to create out of office notes. This is a little more complicated, but it also allows you to send different out of office emails for different recipients. The instructions may vary slightly depending on the version of Office.

1. After starting Outlook, click on the "File" tab. The category "Information" should already be selected here.
2. Click "Manage rules and notifications" below. A new window will open.
3. Under the "E-Mail Rules" tab is the "New Rule" item. Select "Apply rule to messages I receive" here.
4. In the following, you can select the cases for which senders (with certain words, for example) should send the vacation notice. If you want the out-of-office message to be sent to all senders of the emails received, select "Via account account name" and choose the email account you want (in case you are managing multiple accounts with Outlook).
5. In the next window, select what should happen to the received email. In order to answer them with a template, you have to tick "answer them with a specific template". To select the template (Word file), click on the blue text ("of a specific template"). The vacation notice is now active.

In this practical tip, you can read how to set up automatic e-mail forwarding in Outlook.