If you work in a corporate environment and use email applications like Outlook, you’re probably used to setting your out of office reply. Did you know that you can set up out-of-office responses in Gmail?
Because most people use Gmail for personal communication, it’s a good idea to let folks know when you’re on vacation or vacationing.
In Gmail, this is a fairly simple process, although it differs slightly from what you would be used to in Outlook. In this post, you’ll discover how to enable out of office in Gmail, how to disable it, and what others can anticipate from you if you do.
How to Set Up Gmail’s Out of Office Mode?
An out of office reply is the way to go if you’re preparing to go on vacation for a bit and want to let people know that you might not be able to answer to their emails as fast as normal.
Log into your Gmail account before beginning the instructions below.
1. Go to your Gmail account’s upper right corner and click the gear Settings icon.
2. Make a decision At the top of the Settings list, you can see all of your options.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Vacation responder section. Turn on the Vacation responder setting.
4. Decide on your vacation’s first day. When individuals email you, type the subject line and message you’d like to auto-respond to.
When filling out this form, keep the following options in mind
- You don’t have to activate and select a Last day, but it’s a good idea to do so just in case you forget to turn on your Vacation responder.
- By default, the message field uses a powerful formatting editor, which allows you to format the message text using the formatting bar. The formatting will convert to plain text if you pick Plain Text above the message field.
- If you only want the Vacation responder’s auto-replies to be sent to people you already know, select Only send a response to those in my Contacts.
- If you don’t want strangers to know you’ll be gone for a long period of time, this is a smart option.
5. To enable the Vacation responder, select Save Changes.
How to Turn Off Gmail’s Out of Office Mode
- You may disable the Vacation responder in two methods. You’ll notice a message regarding the status of the responder at the top of your inbox while it’s enabled.
- To switch off the responder immediately, select End now. This is an easy method to turn it off without having to go back into your Gmail settings to change the responder settings.
- If you want, you can disable the Vacation responder in Gmail settings by selecting Vacation Settings in the notification message or returning to your Gmail Settings window.
- To find the Vacation responder area again, go to the bottom of the Gmail Settings menu.
- To turn off the automatic response, select Vacation responder off.
Note: If you’ve set the Last day field to the end date of your trip, you won’t have to do this. After this date, the Vacation responder will be disabled automatically.
However, the preceding approach will work if you wish to switch off the Vacation responder before the Last day setting.
How Does Gmail’s Vacation Reply Work?
Keep in mind that the Vacation responder’s times are established automatically by email because you may only provide the start and end dates.
- Start Time: 12 a.m., 12 a.m., 12 a.
- Time to End: 11:59 p.m.
Set the Start Date one day earlier than the start of your vacation if you prefer the time to begin at midnight the day before your vacation begins.
When you enable the Vacation responder, those who email you will see the following behavior from your Gmail account.
- When someone message you for the first time, they will see your auto-response. The auto-response will not be sent if they message you again.
If the same person messages you again after four days, the auto-response will be triggered again. - The countdown resets if you edit your vacation response, and everyone who messages you for the first time after editing will receive an auto-respond.
- Gmail is intelligent enough to not automatically respond to messages that are automatically classified into the spam folder or mailing lists.
If they start writing an email to you, other Gmail users will see your “out of office” status. - Filters in Gmail help you send smarter out-of-office replies.
- Using Gmail Filters, you may create a more focused auto reply with tailored messages for certain users.
- You must first construct an email template to reply with before you can use a filter to auto-replay. To do so, open Gmail and compose a new email using the email you want to reply to. Then, in the lower right corner of the window, pick the three dots “More” menu, select Templates, Save draught as template, and then Save as new template.
- In the pop-up window, give the template a name.
- Return to Gmail Settings to access Gmail filters. At the top of the Settings window, select Filters and Blocked Addresses.
Create a new filter can be found at the bottom of this page.
- In the Create filter form, in the From field, type the email address you wish to auto-reply to. When you’re finished, click Create filter.
- Enable the checkbox next to Send template in the Create filter window. Select the Boss Reply template you created earlier from the dropdown box.
- Finally, click the Create filter button at the bottom to activate your new filter and auto-reply.
- Now, whenever someone with the email address you specified in the filter sends you an email, they’ll get an out-of-office response using the template you provided.
