Digital Tip

Leaving an Away-from-Desk Message

The e-mail systems in most organizations allow you to create an "away-from-your-desk" message, a reply that is automatically sent to everyone who sends you a message while you’re gone. Most users employ this option only for prolonged absences from e-mail (for example, vacations or business trips) as opposed to short absences like meetings. To use these messages most effectively, follow these three steps:

Compose Your Message
Implement Your Message
Remove Your Message

Compose Your Message

First check to make sure your organization offers away-from-your-desk messages as a possibility. A very basic away message might read like this:

"Hello. I am out of the office and will not respond to e-mail until my return."

But to compose an effective away message, consider what your reader needs to know about your absence; at the same time, keep in mind that you’ll likely receive e-mail from solicitors and other strangers as well as your coworkers, so you may not want to provide too much detail. Some things to consider including are the following:

Dates (and possibly times) of your departure and return.
Alternate contacts. Is there someone else in your organization to whom people should write with specific types of requests? If so, be specific about the types of requests that should be referred, and be sure to notify those people that they’ll be receiving requests.
Forwarding information. In some organizations, your e-mail will be forwarded to someone else in your absence, but that person may or may not respond to all forwarded e-mail. Give your senders a sense of what will happen to their e-mail in your absence, if anything.
Your vacation status. Are you going to be completely out of contact? Checking in periodically and responding to critical messages? How much do you want senders to know about your status?

Implement Your Message

Learn the system. Once you’ve composed your message, contact your system administrator to ask for directions on how you should put your message into action. In many organizations, administrators provide a Web-based form that allows you to automate the process; simply paste in your message and click a button. And some more advanced functions may be available; some systems allow you to indicate a return date after which your mail automatically goes back to normal status.

Ask the listserv question. If you belong to any listservs, newsgroups, or other e-mail lists, be sure to ask your administrator how your message system manages these lists. Most newer systems are intelligent enough not to respond to every list message, but if your system does, it might send your vacation message back to the entire list every time someone posts to the list. If that happens, you’ll almost certainly return from vacation to an inbox full of angry messages. If you want to be sure, temporarily sign off your lists while you’re gone.

Remove Your Message. When you return from vacation, be sure to turn off your vacation message, or people will continue to think you’re out of the office!