How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply in Microsoft Outlook

Managing Expectations While You Are Away

Taking time away from work is essential for maintaining productivity and preventing burnout. However, if clients, colleagues, or vendors email you while you are on holiday and receive absolute silence in return, it can cause confusion, frustration, and delayed projects. Setting up an automatic “Out of Office” (OOO) reply ensures that anyone who contacts you knows exactly why you are not responding and when they can expect to hear back.

A professional Out of Office message should be concise. It must clearly state the exact dates of your absence, whether you will have limited or zero access to your inbox during that time, and, crucially, who the sender should contact in the event of a genuine business emergency.

Microsoft Outlook makes setting up these automated replies incredibly easy. Furthermore, it allows you to configure different messages depending on who is emailing you. You can set a brief, casual message for your internal colleagues, and a more formal, detailed message for external clients and vendors.

Setting Up Automatic Replies in Outlook (Desktop App)

If you use the standard Microsoft Outlook desktop application on Windows (the version included with an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription), follow these steps:

1. Open the Outlook application on your computer.
2. Click on the File tab located in the top left corner of the window.
3. Ensure Info is selected in the left-hand blue sidebar.
4. Click the large square button labelled Automatic Replies (Out of Office).
5. A new dialogue box will appear. By default, it is set to “Do not send automatic replies”. Change this by clicking the radio button next to Send automatic replies.

Pro Tip: It is highly recommended to tick the box that says “Only send during this time range”. You can then input the exact date and time you leave the office, and the exact date and time you return. If you use this feature, Outlook will automatically turn the OOO message off when you get back, meaning you won’t accidentally leave it running for an extra week.

Customising Internal vs. External Messages

In the bottom half of the Automatic Replies window, you will notice two distinct tabs: Inside My Organisation and Outside My Organisation.

6. Click the Inside My Organisation tab. This message will only be sent to people who share your company email domain (e.g., your coworkers). Type a brief message here. (Example: “Hi team, I am on annual leave until the 15th of August. Please speak to Sarah regarding the Q3 report.”)
7. Click the Outside My Organisation tab. Ensure the checkbox labelled “Auto-reply to people outside my organisation” is ticked.
8. You can now type a more formal message for clients and external contacts. (Example: “Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office on annual leave with no access to email, returning on Monday the 15th of August. For urgent enquiries, please contact [email protected].”)
9. Once both messages are written, click OK to save and activate the replies.

Setting Up Automatic Replies in Outlook on the Web

If you do not use the desktop application and instead access your emails through a web browser via Outlook.com or your company’s web portal, the process is slightly different.

1. Log into your Outlook email in your web browser.
2. Click the gear icon (Settings) in the top right corner of the screen.
3. A menu will slide out on the right. At the very bottom of this menu, click View all Outlook settings.
4. In the pop-up window, ensure Mail is selected on the far left, and then click Automatic replies in the middle column.
5. Toggle the switch to turn on Automatic replies.
6. Just like the desktop app, you can choose to send replies only during a specific time period, and you can draft separate messages for internal senders and external senders.
7. When you are finished drafting your messages, click Save at the bottom of the window.

When you return to work, if you did not set a specific time range, you will need to return to these same settings menus and manually turn the Automatic Replies feature off before you begin responding to emails.