But before you go, here’s some additional information you may find helpful.

Microsoft’s page describes two ways to set up an auto-reply. You want “Turn on/off the Out of Office Assistant for an Exchange account.” You do not need to create rules or “find out what type of email account you have.” You have an Exchange account.

If you will be out of the office (or otherwise away from your email), people who send you messages may wonder why you haven’t responded. Outlook’s Out of Office assistant lets you create a reply that will be sent once to each person who sends you a message. You can choose to include and exclude people who fall into three categories:

• Inside My Company - this category is only those people who have accounts on CIT’s Exchange server. This includes most faculty and staff, retirees, and some students. Note: People in colleges and units that manage their own email servers will never be “Inside.”
• Outside My Company - this category is everyone who isn’t inside. Most undergraduates (who use G Suite accounts) fall into this group, as do people in colleges and units that manage their own email servers. The “Outside” group is broken down into two smaller groups:
  • Address Books contacts only - only people who (1) are not “inside” and (2) have an entry in your Contacts are in this group.
  • Anyone outside my company - and this is everybody else.

Given the amount of unsolicited (and possibly unwelcome) email we receive, we generally recommend that you do not send auto-replies to everyone in the world. This would open you up to responding to spam or marketing messages, which would confirm to the sender that they had reached a valid address, and you would most likely start getting even more junk mail.

The auto-reply function lives on the mail server, so you do not need to leave Outlook running on your computer for it to work.

Your messages will be delivered to you exactly the same way whether you have auto-reply turned on or off.