Tuesday Tip: Delaying Email Delivery and Out of Office Reply in Outlook

By Alisa Michael

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I thought I would share two helpful tips for Outlook.

Delay Email Delivery

I have a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to catch up on work.  This is a great time for me to respond to emails, however, most people do not appreciate receiving those emails at 4:00 a.m., especially our engineers who always seem to be listening through the night for email alerts!

David recently showed me a great tip. Outlook 2013 has a built-in feature that allows you to delay an email to go out at a time of your choosing.  Tony wrote a similar Tuesday Tip for older versions.

First, compose your email.  Once you’ve completed it, choose Options, Delay Delivery.

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This will open the Properties dialog box.  Under Delivery Options, check Do Not Deliver Before box and then choose the date and time you would like the drop down lists.

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Click the Close button to save.  Now, click the Send button.  You will see that the message in your Outbox until the time that you chose when it will send automatically. One caveat is that if you don’t have an Exchange server you must have Outlook open at the time of delivery in order for this feature to work. If it is not, the email will send the next time that you open Outlook after the chosen delivery date.

Out of Office Automatic Reply

Another useful tip is Automatic Replies for when you are out of the office. You simply choose, File, then Automatic Replies (Out of Office).

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From there, you choose the timeframe to send automatic replies and type a message.   This means that you can send an internal message to people within your company and a separate reply for emails that come from other people.

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Once this is complete, an automated email will be sent to anyone who sends you an email during your absence.

Alisa MichaelAlisa Michael

With over 17 years’ experience in the legal arena as well as client management, Alisa brings her experience to Network 1’s team, clients and partners.  She strives to be proactive in managing clients’ needs and expectations with an outcome of client satisfaction and retention.

amichael@network1consulting.com or 404.997.7637

 

Network 1 Consulting is a 17-year-oldIT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for law firms and medical practices.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value are the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firms.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

 

Tony Rushin Headshot

Tony Rushin: In his role as VP of sales & marketing, he is responsible for hiring, managing and coaching the sales team and always staying on top of (and meeting) the needs of clients. Under his leadership, the company has steadily grown each year.

Network 1 designs, builds and supports the IT you need to run your business more securely, productively and successfully. Whether you want to outsource all of your IT needs to a reliable, responsive, service-oriented company, or need to supplement the work of your internal IT staff, we will carefully evaluate where you are now, discuss where you want to go and implement and support a plan to get you there with as little interruption as possible.

2 Comments

  1. Tiffany Grint on July 7, 2015 at 2:04 pm

    Hi Alisa:

    I’m having a hard time finding an answer to my question, but it combines both of the items you commented upon here.

    I need to send a delayed response to our Board of Governors, to remind them about a meeting the day before (the reminder will contain important teleconferencing information). I have no problem with sending then a message with a delayed delivery time and date.

    My issue is, that I will be out-of-town on vacation with no way to access my email, and my email will be set up with an “out-of-office” response message.

    If I leave my computer on with Outlook open, will my delayed delivery message still go out, even with my out-of-office message on?

    Thank you for any guidance you can give me!

    Tiffany

    • Corin on June 30, 2017 at 8:38 am

      NOTE: You must have your computer turned on and Outlook open at the time you want the message to be sent for this to work. If you use Outlook Exchange, it is server based so you do not need to have Outlook open.

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