Out of office message examples for every situation

An out of office message is the automatic reply your email sends while you are away. A good one answers three questions in its first two lines: when you'll be back, whether this email will be read, and who can help before then. Most need four sentences or fewer. Put the return day first, because plenty of people read only the preview in their notification and never open the reply.

Below are original examples for vacations, public holidays, sick days, parental leave, travel, customer inboxes, writers on deadline and people leaving a job, several in two versions: a short one for colleagues and a fuller one for everyone else. The people, companies and phone numbers are invented, and the addresses use example.com. Keep the structure and swap in your own dates and names.

What every out of office message needs

Take any useful automatic reply apart and you find the same four parts, in the same order. The order is the inverted pyramid that news writers use: the fact the reader came for goes first, and detail follows for anyone who keeps reading.

Two details separate a useful reply from a vague one. Give the weekday with the date: "back on the 14th" makes the reader open a calendar, and "back Monday, June 14" does not. And promise a reply on a day you can keep. If you return on Monday, say you'll answer by Wednesday. Your first morning back goes to the backlog, and the buffer means nobody feels ignored on Tuesday.

Simple out of office messages

These fit most short absences. Start here and adjust.

Humor works when it costs the reader nothing: the facts still come first, and the joke is one clause. Match the tone of voice of the emails you normally send. A line your team would enjoy can look odd to a new client or a recruiter, and an automatic reply goes to both, so keep the personality in the internal version.

Vacation and holiday messages

For a week or more away, say more about who covers what. People who write during a two-week vacation usually need something, and a single "contact my colleague" sends every question to one person, including the ones she can't answer.

The internal version leans on a handover note, and it is worth the twenty minutes it takes to write one. The headings of a weekly status report work well: what is in progress, what falls due while you're away, who decides what, and where the files are.

Sick days and personal leave

You don't owe anyone a reason. "I'm out of the office" covers illness, a family emergency and a funeral, and it keeps private things private. Unplanned replies are usually written in a hurry, often from a phone, so two sentences is plenty.

"Messages aren't being forwarded" earns its place. Without it, people assume someone is reading your inbox and wait for an answer that isn't coming.

Parental leave, sabbaticals and long absences

For an absence measured in months, two things change. A month is more honest than an exact date if your return could move. And the person covering for you should be named as the contact, not a stopgap, so people stop holding questions for you. If your plans change, edit the reply: Gmail sends the updated version to people who already got the old one when they write again.

Business travel, conferences and training

When you're working but away from your desk, the reader needs to know how slow you'll be, not only that you're gone. Name the time zone when it matters: "checking email once a day" means little until the reader knows when your day is.

Customer inboxes and freelancers

A shared inbox or a business owner's reply has a different job. It confirms the message arrived and says when a person will answer, so hours and a time zone matter more than names.

For writers and editors

Writers use automatic replies to protect writing time as much as vacation time. A deadline reply works when it says how often you'll check and sends business questions to whoever handles them.

Leaving a job, or not reading email at all

When you leave a job, the reply on your old address is often set by IT, so check before you write one. If it's yours to write, say you've left, name who handles your work now, and leave out your new employer unless your old one is happy for you to mention it.

Some people go further and tell senders that mail sent while they're away will be deleted, so there is no backlog to come home to. In 2014 Daimler introduced software called Mail on Holiday that let its employees have incoming email deleted automatically during their vacations. Do it only where your workplace allows it, and make the reply carry the weight the inbox no longer does.

Subject lines for automatic replies

If your email app lets you set a subject for the reply, use it for the one fact people need, since the subject is what shows in their inbox list. In Gmail, adding a subject also sends the reply as a separate email instead of inside the sender's thread.

How to write and set up your own

1. Choose the day you'll reply

   Pick the day you can actually answer, not only the day you're back, and put both the weekday and the date in the first sentence.

2. Ask your backup before you name them

   Check that the person agrees, knows what they're covering and can open the files. Write down what they handle, so the reply can say it in a few words.

3. Write two versions

   One for colleagues, with names and handover details, and one for everyone else, shorter and more formal. If your company's style guide has a standard reply, start from it.

4. Schedule it with an end date

   Set the first and last day in your email settings so the reply switches itself off. Then send yourself a message from another address to see what people will get.

Gmail and Outlook handle the details differently, according to Google's and Microsoft's help pages:

Two consequences follow. Because Gmail's reply stops at 11:59 PM on the last day, enter your last day off as the last day, not the day you return. And for senders outside your organization, Microsoft suggests limiting Outlook's reply to your contacts, because replying to everyone also answers newsletters, advertisements and junk mail. Gmail already skips spam and mailing lists.

Keep your replies on file

If you set an automatic reply several times a year, keep your versions in one document instead of rewriting them from memory: the vacation reply, the sick-day reply, the holiday closure, each in an internal and an external version. In Strokes that document is a file on your own machine, and you can select a draft and press ⌘K to ask for a shorter version, or for an external version of your internal one, edited in place.

What to leave out

Automatic replies go to anyone who writes to you, including strangers and the occasional piece of spam that gets through. Short sentences and a plain list of contacts also help readability on a phone, which is where most of these get read.

For the emails on either side of the absence, such as the note to a client before you leave or the catch-up after, see these professional email examples and the ways to sign off an email.