Set up an automatic reply in Outlook

For added convenience, the Outlook mail client offers its s the ability to automatically reply to incoming messages. This can greatly simplify mail handling when you want to reply to incoming messages in the same way. In addition, the automatic reply can be configured both for all incoming messages and selectively.

If you run into a similar problem, this tutorial will help you simplify email handling.

Therefore, to configure automatic reply in outlook 2010 you will have to create a template and then configure a corresponding rule.

Create a template for the automatic reply

Let's start at the beginning by preparing a template for the email that will be sent to recipients in response.

First, we are going to create a new message. To do this, on the "Home" tab, click on the "Create message" button.

Here you have to enter the text and format it if necessary. This text will be used in your reply message.

Now that you are done with the text, go to the File menu and there select the "Save As" command.

In the Save Item window, select "Outlook Template" from the "File Type" list and enter the name of our template. Now confirm the saving by clicking the "Save" button. Now the new message window can be closed.

This completes the creation of the template for the automatic reply and you can proceed to configuring the rule.

Create an Automatic Reply Rule for Incoming Messages

To quickly create a new rule, you must go to the Main tab of the main Outlook window and, in the Move group, click the "Rules" button and then select "Manage rules and alerts".

Here we click on «New ...» and go to the Wizard for new rules.

In "Start with an empty rule", we click on "Apply rule to messages I have received" and proceed to the next action by clicking "Next".

In this step, as a general rule, it is not necessary to select any conditions. However, if you do not need to configure a reply to all incoming messages, you can select the necessary conditions by checking the checkboxes.

Then proceed to the next step by clicking the corresponding button.

If you don't select any conditions, Outlook will prompt you that the configured rule will apply to all incoming emails. In the event that we need to do so, we will validate by clicking on Yes or we will click on No and establish the conditions.

In this step, we select the action with the message. As we are configuring the automatic reply to incoming messages, we tick the box «Reply using the specified template».

At the bottom of the window, we have to select the desired template. To do this, click on the "Specified template" link and go to the selection of the template itself.

If in the message template creation phase you did not change the path and leave everything as default, in this window simply choose "Templates in the file system" and the created template will appear in the list. Otherwise, you need to click the "Browse" button and open the folder in which you saved the file with the message template.

If the desired action is checked and the template file is selected, you can proceed to the next step.

Here you can configure the exceptions. That is, those cases in which the automatic response does not work. If necessary, select the required conditions and configure them. If there are no exceptions to your autoresponder rule, proceed to the last step by clicking "Next".

Actually, here it is no longer necessary to adjust anything, so you can immediately press the "Finish" button.

Now depending on the configured conditions and exceptions, Outlook will send your template in response to incoming emails. However, the Rules Wizard only provides a single automatic reply to each recipient during a session.

That is, as soon as Outlook starts, the session also starts. It ends when the program is exited. Therefore, while Outlook is running, you will not be able to reply to recipients who have sent multiple messages. During the session, Outlook maintains a list of s to whom it has sent an automatic reply, which helps prevent forwarding. However, if you close and re-enter Outlook, the list is discarded.

To disable automatic reply to incoming messages, simply uncheck the automatic reply rule in the rules and alerts management window.

You can use these instructions to set up automatic reply in Outlook 2013 and later versions.

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