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Use Automatic reply rules without sending an Out of Office message

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› Outlook › Use Automatic reply rules without sending an Out of Office message

Last reviewed on March 28, 2018     7 Comments

A user wanted to use the out of office dialog function to forward messages but did not want to send out of office replies to everyone.

I want to use automatic reply rules to forward mail to a colleague when I’m out of the office, but I don’t want to announce to everyone that I’m out. Is there a way to use autoreply rules and not send an out of office to everyone?

Yes, but only for internal addresses. If you enable automatic replies but leave the message field blank, the automatic reply rules will run but no reply is sent. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for external addresses – you’ll need to set a message but can limit automatic replies to Contacts only.

This method will also work with Outlook.com accounts.

To set up Out of Office, open the Out of Office dialog from the File tab.

  1. Select Send Automatic replies. Select the time period it will be in effect, if desired.
  2. Click Rules in the lower left corner of the dialog.
    create out of office rules
  3. Click Add Rule to create your Out of office rules.
    manage out of office rules
  4. To Forward all messages, tick Forward and enter an email address.

  5. Choose the forwarding Method. Standard is a normal forward, with the message From you with the forward header in the body, while Insert as attachment does just that. Leave message intact will redirect the message to the address, so it appears to be from the original sender (this looks nicer but could trigger junk mail filters).
  6. Click Ok when finished

Use Automatic reply rules without sending an Out of Office message was last modified: March 28th, 2018 by Diane Poremsky
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Related Posts:

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  • out of office rules
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About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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EbonyKalls (@guest_219576)
July 29, 2022 1:53 pm
#219576

I want to use the 'Rule' option to reply to specific distribution list with a template message. Question, will the reply go to all the distribution list on the 'To' field or only to the list that reached out?

Screen Shot 2022-07-29 at 1.53.11 PM.png
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Reply
Jones (@guest_212784)
February 13, 2019 10:44 am
#212784

Great! First time I forgot to add office rule, now it's working. Thanks for this beautiful tutorials

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Alex (@guest_212177)
October 31, 2018 6:38 am
#212177

thanks you sir

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-3
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Joe (@guest_211887)
September 7, 2018 9:13 am
#211887

When these steps are taken in Outlook for Windows 2016:

File > Automatic Replies > Rules... >Add Rule... > Forward > Check the box and populate the "To;" field Using PowerShell, where can I find this "rule?"

Already tried: Get-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration and Get-InboxRule but no luck. It doesn't show as a "rule" in the usual places. Any ideas?

Thanks mucho!

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Reply
Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Joe
November 1, 2018 12:11 am
#212180

As far as I know, setting OOF rules using PowerShell is not possible - its not exposed in PowerShell.

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Toby (@guest_213120)
Reply to  Diane Poremsky
April 18, 2019 3:00 pm
#213120

This doesn't work?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-mailboxautoreplyconfiguration?view=exchange-ps

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Toby
April 18, 2019 11:51 pm
#213129

That sets OOF, but not the OOF rules.

2019-04-18_23-52-36.png
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