Set an out of office, forward mail, and cover a colleague on leave

Out of office, forwarding, and covering someone on leave

Someone is going on leave and their mail needs to be handled. There are three separate jobs here, and doing the right one saves a lot of trouble. An automatic reply tells senders you are away. Forwarding sends mail somewhere else. Cover means a colleague can actually read and answer the mailbox.

Try this first

To set an automatic reply in Outlook on Windows:

  1. Click File, then Automatic Replies (Out of Office).
  2. Select Send automatic replies.
  3. Tick Only send during this time range and set the start and end. Do this rather than relying on remembering to switch it off, because a stale out of office that runs for a month after someone is back looks careless to customers.
  4. Type your message on the tab labelled "Inside My Organization" (Microsoft’s spelling).
  5. Click the "Outside My Organization" tab and write a message there too, or nobody outside the business will get a reply at all. This is the step most people miss.
  6. Click OK.

In Outlook on the web, click the gear icon at the top right, then Mail, then Automatic replies. In the Outlook phone app, tap your profile picture, then the gear icon, then your account, then Automatic Replies.

Writing one that helps. Keep it to three lines. Say the dates you are away, say who to contact instead and give their email address, and say when you will next be reading mail. Do not promise to reply on a particular day if you will not.

Two things to leave out. Avoid saying you are overseas or giving your exact travel dates, because auto-replies are a well known way for scammers to work out when a decision maker is unreachable and try an invoice change on your accounts team. And avoid naming a colleague as your contact without asking them first.

If that didn't fix it

Ask us for anything below, because they are set above your mailbox and you cannot do them yourself.

  • Forwarding to another person in the business for the duration of the leave, with a copy kept in the original mailbox so nothing is lost.
  • Proper cover, where a colleague can open the mailbox, read it and reply from it. This is the right answer for anything longer than a few days, and it is better than forwarding because replies still go out from the correct address and the history stays in one place.
  • An automatic reply on a mailbox nobody can sign into, such as a shared address or the mailbox of someone who has already left.
  • Long term arrangements after a departure, where mail to an old address should reach whoever took over the role.

Tell us the mailbox, who is covering, the start and end dates, and whether the person covering also needs to send as that address.

Two things to avoid

Do not forward work mail to a personal address. It is the quickest option and it causes real problems. Business correspondence ends up in an account the business does not control and cannot search, which matters if there is ever a dispute or an audit. Personal accounts are also far more likely to be broken into. And forwarded mail is one of the strongest signals a spam filter looks for, so replies to your customers start landing in junk. If someone needs mail while on leave, give them access to the mailbox properly instead.

Do not share the password. Handing a colleague your login to cover you means there is no record of who did what, it usually breaks the security check on their device, and it is almost always against your own policies. Proper cover takes us a few minutes to arrange and does the job better.

How to stop it happening again

Give us a few days notice before planned leave, especially over Christmas when half the office is away at once. Send one message listing who is away, the dates, and who is covering each mailbox, and we can set it all up in one go. Last minute requests on the Friday afternoon before someone flies out are the ones that get missed.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.

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