Select the product you need help with

Help with out of office replies in Outlook for Mac 2011

Article ID: 2535692 - View products that this article applies to.

SUMMARY

Learn about out of office replies in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011.

In Outlook for Mac 2011, you can click Tools and then select the Out of Office option to use the Out of Office Assistant to set up out of office replies. This option is available only if your mail account is a Microsoft Exchange account.

If you are not using a Microsoft Exchange account, the Out of Office option will be dimmed. However, you can still set up out of office replies for a POP or IMAP account by setting up a mail rule to automatically reply to new email messages.

How to set up an out of office rule for POP and IMAP accounts

To create a new rule in Outlook for Mac 2011 that automatically sends custom responses to all messages that you receive while you are out of the office, follow these steps:

In Outlook, click Tools, and then select Rules.
In the Rules window, select POP or IMAP from the list.
Click the plus [+] sign.

Collapse this imageExpand this image
In the Rule name field, type Out of Office.
In the If section, in the drop-down menu next to Execute, select If all criteria are met.
In the If section, make sure that All messages is selected in the second drop-down menu.
In the Then section, select Reply from the first drop-down menu.
Click Reply Text, and then type your out of office message.
Click to clear the Do not apply other rules to messages that meet these criteria check box.
Click to select the Enabled box.
Click OK.
Close the window.

Collapse this imageExpand this image

To turn off the custom out of office rule in Outlook, follow these steps:

In Outlook, click Tools, and then select Rules.
Select POP or IMAP, depending on the rules selection.
To disable the out of office rule, click to clear the check box next to your rule.
Close the window.

Important Because mail rules are run by Outlook and not by the mail server, your computer must be on and Outlook must be open for automatic reply messages to be sent.

For more information, click here

(http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/office/14/en-us/outlook/item/cda31e27-a3dd-428d-8b37-bc75033525ba)