How to Set Up Out Of Office in Outlook 2016?

The ‘Out of Office’ or ‘Automatic Replies’ is a very useful feature for corporate users. Setting up this feature helps them to automatically reply to any incoming emails while they’re offline. Alternatively, it is also known as the Out of Office Assistant. 

Thus, this will notify the sender that you’re currently unavailable to reply to them. Hence, it will not disrupt the workflow of the company. Ordinarily, this feature is only available for Exchange or corporate accounts. However, you can enable it in a non-exchange or home account as well. 

Steps to Set Up Out Of Office in Outlook 2016

The following steps will help to set up ‘Out of Office’ for 2010 versions and above. These will work in Office 365 as well. Furthermore, these steps are for Exchange users. You can head over to the next section to set it up for Non-Exchange accounts. 

1. Firstly, open Microsoft Outlook on your computer. Head over to File and then click on the Info tab. 
2. Below, you will see the option for ‘Automatic Replies’ or ‘Out of Office’. You may not see this option if you have a non-exchange account. 
3. Next, click on the checkbox beside ‘Send Automatic Replies’. Here, you can also specify the date and time period during which the feature will be active. 
4. Next, click on ‘Inside my organization’ type the relevant message you want it to send while you’re away. 
5. Similarly, do the same by clicking on ‘Outside my Organization’. 
6. Next, set the start and end date or time and click Ok. 

The ‘Out of Office’ feature will work within the specified period of time. Afterward, it will automatically turn off after the end date or time has been reached. You can follow the same steps to activate or deactivate this feature at will. 

How to Enable ‘Out of Office’ for Non-Exchange Account 

Users who have a non-exchange account can follow these instructions to set up automatic replies. This can be helpful for various reasons even if you don’t want to use it for professional purposes.

1. Open Microsoft Outlook and make a new email message. You do not have to put in any sender address. 
2. Next, fill out the subject field and type the message you want it to be displayed while you’ll be gone. This will be used to create an office template for automatic replies. 
3. Subsequently, click on File and select Save. Beside the Save As type, click on the drop-down menu and select ‘Outlook template’. Next, click on Save to save this template. 
4. Afterward, click on the File menu again. Head over to ‘Manage Rules & Alerts’. 
5. Here, you need to go to the ‘Email Rules’ tab and click on ‘New Rule’. 
6. A window will appear. Under ‘What do you want to do with the message’, select the conditions you want to use automatic replies for. Click on Next after checking the conditions. 
7. Next, click on ‘Reply using a specific template’. Now, you will see an underlined link text of ‘a specific template’ under Step 2. Click on it. 
8. Subsequently, locate the template you created in the above steps. Select and click on Open. 
9. Follow the instructions and click on Next. 
10.  Finally, give a name for this rule and select ‘Turn on this Rule’. Click on Finish when done.