Outlook 2010: Auto Reply to Emails

By Usman on Apr 01 2010 19 Comments

If you are off for vacations or on a business trip then it would become a dire need to automatically send email stating alternative ways to contact you. In Outlook 2010 you can automatically deal with the incoming emails in certain way, i.e,  by creating a template which includes important phone numbers, addresses, etc for immediate contact. Whenever you will be contacted via email, the specified mail template will automatically be sent as a reply. In this post we will be creating a simple rule which eventually enables you to create an auto-reply. To use this feature you will need Microsoft Exchange Server to be configured with Outlook 2010.

To start off with, first we need to make a template which will be automatically sent to the sender’s email address, for this launch Outlook 2010 and navigate to Home tab and click New E-mail. Now compose an appropriate email template.

mail

Now from File menu, click Save As.

save as

It will lead you to Save As dialog, from Save as type options, click Outlook Template (*.oft). Give it an appropriate name and click Save

template

Now head over to Home tab and from Rules options, click Manage Rules & Alerts.

manage rules

Rules and Alerts dialog will appear, click New Rule, you will see Rules Wizard dialog. Under Start from a blank rule, select Apply rule on messages I receive, and click Next.

rules and alerts

In this step, enable sent only to me option, and click Next.

2nd step

Now enable Reply using a specific template and from bottom pane click a specific template. A Select a Reply Template dialog will open-up, from Look-In options, click User Templates in File System. Now select the previously saved template and click Open, as shown in the screenshot below.

out of town templ 3rd

At the bottom of the dialog, you will see the template file is inserted. Click Finish to end the wizard.

click next 4th

It will bring you back to Rules and Alerts dialog, now you can see the newly created rule by the name of sent only to me. Click OK to continue.

Now when someone will send you an email, an auto reply(selected template) mail will be automatically sent to the sender’s email address.

You can also check out previously reviewed guides on Apply rules on Text messages (SMS) & Email Tracking in Outlook 2010.

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  • Jamie

    is there a way to make a server side rule so outlook doesn’t need to be running?

  • H

    This is not working. No email is being sent out. Is it working for anyone else?

  • Gee

    Not working here. Getting an error when an email comes in saying reply email could not be sent.

  • Brian

    Once that is all done, the last missing step is to run the rule. Click on “Run Rules now”, then select the rule you wish to apply, and then click Run. And that should be it.

  • Suzanne Sahagun

    This is very helpful! I needed to have an auto reply that goes out for every email I received. For the criteria I selected “where my name is in the To and cc box” and then, I selected “Have server reply using a specific message,” then I created the specific message by clicking on the hyperlink, specific message. I had no exceptions and then clicked finishedand apply. Everyone would receive the response. Thank you! This was an excellent help.

    • E

      This is an extremely hard way to do an auto reply. Just click File – Info – Automatic Replies (Out of Office). This is located on the right of the screen after you click Info.

      • Dummy

        I agree. Whoever wrote this article forgot to mention that the article was in fact about the most difficult and convoluted way to create an auto-reply.

        • Maddas69

          Problem is that OOF will only reply once to the same sender. A rule will reply to every e-mail received.

    • Maddas69

      This is the correct way to do it :-) Thank you

  • Martin Walker

    It’s converluted but necessary in some cases. Regular out of office is very basic. I need to add image, links etc to my reply so the basic didn’t work well for me. Thanks for this solution.

    • Shahid chattha

      Good solution

    • John Dougherty

      Is this working? I have tried having the server send a reply or just ‘send a reply’ and the rule fails.

  • Mike McNellis

    I have an IMAP account and I am not a computer genius and I cannot figure out how to set up my AutoResponder. I have no idea what a freaking Exchange server is – I just want to setup auto-replies for while we are closed.

    Why is that so hard?

  • Mike McNellis

    It’s 2011 and I cannot understand why Microsoft makes everything so difficult.

    There, I feel better!

    • pam

      yes, it is very convoluted. (but our IT switched to Oulook 2010)

  • Levi Silva

    This first 3 slides are for Outlook 2010 – but there is no “home” tab in Microsoft 2010, therefore this is useless.

  • E Bollinger

    The “Home” tab will reappear only after you close out the new message you created and then you can get to the “Rules”. I agree this is an insane process to do something so simple and so common.

  • Georgia Lewis

    I have just about burst into tears at my desk trying to set up an Auto-reply by that convoluted way suggested. Am going to try the File-Info-Automatic Replies way now and see how that goes. And then I shall drink wine…

  • Rich

    For all those people going on about Out-of-Office, this is completely different – this will send a reply every time someone sends the address an email, OOF will only reply once.

    The problem with the above description is that it is a client-side rule (ie Outlook needs to be running to send the reply) which kind of defeats the purpose.

    Better to use the ‘Have server reply using a specific message’ option (note, this is limited to plain text only). This will run regardless.

    For either method, make sure you have ‘Allow automatic replies’ switched on on the server (Exchange System Manager -> Global Settings -> Internet Message Formats -> Default -> Advanced tab)