How can you save time in Microsoft Outlook?
There are four ways to automate email responses: Templates,
Signatures, Quick Parts, and Automatic Replies,
often referred to as Out of Office replies. I'm Dawn Bjork,
The Software Pro.
I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and certified Outlook Specialist.
In this online training we'll focus on Automatic Replies.
To learn more about the other ways to automate your email responses,
look for the links to these videos in the description below. In Outlook,
the Automatic Replies or the Out of Office feature,
tell people who send you email when you're not available to respond to their
messages.
This time management tool requires a Microsoft Exchange server account or
Exchange Online through Office 365.
Standalone versions of Outlook running on individual computers do not support
the Out of Office feature. To turn Automatic Replies on or off, first,
click the File tab,
then choose Automatic Replies from the Info tab.
Your next step is to choose Send automatic replies and then ideally then to
specify what that timeframe might be,
the starting and the ending for that.
Always check as well your message.
So in this case we'll make a few updates
and this is one of the challenges we have that is sometimes you'll probably have
seen these where you get an Out of Office response and it has an old message
that hasn't been updated, so it's not just a matter of turning it on,
it's also a matter of confirming that you have updated information.
Additionally,
one of the things that's really valuable is that you can have a different
response for inside my organization versus outside of my organization.
And then you can have this automatically reply indicating perhaps who they
should reach out to.
It could be to anyone or only your contacts so it can be highly customized.
This can be formatted as you wish can include different size fonts and can be
tailored then to your audience as you consider your Out of Office message.
Although it can be engaging, you really don't have to be clever orcreative.
Just be clear with your communication.
It should include at least these three things: How long will you be gone,
when will you return,
and who would be the alternate contact if it's urgent.
However, like your signatures,
your Out of Office message can also be an excellent opportunity to connect in
other ways. This could be, for instance, lead generation.
You could share newsletters, upcoming events,
or perhaps indicate your company is exhibiting at a conference.
Perhaps content promotion. Do you have recent blog posts,
white papers, or other free downloads?
Another thing that could be indicated within your messages might be a social
media engagement.
Share links to social media for your brand or for new products. Additionally,
these can be customized a little bit further, and that is through rules,
so you'll find this as well within your Automatic Replies.
The way that rules work is that this simply gives you the ability to forward a
copy of messages from a specific group of contacts.
So if it's coming from a key client that it could then be forwarded to someone
else who's responsible for that communication. As you can see,
rules can be highly customized.
Consider how those might be helpful for you when you're building your Automatic
Replies. Once you turn on Automatic Replies and return to the office,
how do you know this features enable? Well,
it's pretty obvious right here is that we can see it listed here,
but let's go back to our inbox.
From the inbox at the top we'll see that we also have this prompt that Automatic
Replies are being sent out for this account,
so from either of those locations we have the option to be able to turn it off.
As you saw,
some of the advantages of working with Automatic Replies are that you can tailor
your Out of Office message to your audience including internal, external,
or using rules,
and by applying Automatic Replies you are more easily able to set expectations
and communicate when you may not be accessing your email. Frankly,
there's not a big downside to leveraging this feature.
You will want to make sure your messages are updated for each time you are out
of the office and then of course remember to turn it off once you return.
Now you've seen how to save time and effort by customizing and automating your
work in Outlook using Automatic Replies or Out of Office.
For more tips on being productive with Outlook,
head to TheSoftwarePro.com/Outlook.
If this online training was helpful,
please like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel.
This is Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.