Setting Up an Out of Office Message

If you’ll be away from your email for an extended period, such as on holiday or during college breaks, you should set up your Out of Office to automatically notify people that you won’t be able to reply right away.

1. In the top right, click Settings (Cog Icon) > Settings.
2. In the General tab, scroll to Out of Office Reply and turn it on or off.
3. Customize your message to include the relevant information, the dates you want it to be sent and who you want it to be sent to.
4. At the bottom, click Save Changes.

If your Out of Office is on and you log in to Gmail you will see a banner across the top of your inbox that shows the subject of the Out of Office. Click End now if you want to turn it off or ignore it to leave it on.

You’re email signature will display in the bottom of your Out of Office.

Your auto-reply starts at 12:00 AM (midnight) on the start date and ends at 11:59 PM on the end date, unless you end it earlier. In most cases, your auto-response is only sent to people the first time they message you. So if someone continues to email you for the duration of the time you are out of the office, they may not get any more replies.

Here are the times someone may see your vacation response more than once:

– If the same person contacts you again after four days and your auto-reply is still on, they’ll see your auto-response again.
– Your auto-response starts over each time you edit it. If someone gets your initial auto-response, then emails you again after you’ve edited your response, they’ll see your new response.
– If you use Gmail through your work, school, or other organization, you can choose whether your response is sent to everyone or only people in your organization.
Note: Messages sent to your spam folder and messages addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to won’t get your auto-response.