Solved: Office 2007 Out of Office Rule does not work

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eyetealady🇬🇧

Office 2007 Out of Office Rule does not work

I have a customer who is using MS Outlook 2007 and wants to set up an Out of Office message which is to reply to all incoming emails while she is on holiday. I have been through the MS Office instructions on setting up a rule (Automatically reply to messages) (from their website) 3 times now, and also added a date range (which is not in their info but is in someone else's - this was on the 3rd occasion) and no reply is sent to any of the messages I send. I have left Outlook running and made sure the rule is ticked and sent messages from different email addresses. There must be something else that needs to be done but I cant see what it could be?

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eyetealady🇬🇧

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Update. Outlook is giving an error message.
It says Rules in Error - cannot reply to message.

the_endjinn🇬🇧

Hi,

You want to make sure you are using the Out of Office Assistant rather than creating a rule under 'Rules and Alerts'. The Out of Office Assistant will only reply once to each email address that has sent mail, it is also preconfigured so that all you need to do is put in a message and that is it.

In Outlook 2007 go to Tools -> Out of Office Assistant and then write your message. Then tick the I am currently Out of the Office box and you are done. Just remember to turn it off afterwards :)

the_endjinn🇬🇧

You also want to ensure there are no rules in the lower pane. Please see below

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eyetealady🇬🇧

ASKER

I wish it was that easy. Sadly my customer is not using Exchange - the Out of Office Asst only appears in mailboxes on an Exchange server, it would appear. the info from MS says I have to create a Rule.

BillBondo🇺🇸

You can set this up for both inside and outside emails. I just fill in the response I want without creating any rules.

the_endjinn🇬🇧

True, apologies.

I'm afraid a rule it is. You will need Outlook running for it to work and to create your reply as a text file for the rule to pick up and use. Using the wizard create a blank rule and ensure that it looks like the following:

'Apply this rule after message arrives'
'Reply using C:\path\to\reply.txt'

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eyetealady🇬🇧

ASKER

I have done everything you say already. The 'Reply using.' refers to an oft file as part of the instruction is to create an Outlook template file as the reply. here is the instruction I followed. but it doesnt work! Automatically-reply-to-messages-.pdf

eyetealady🇬🇧

ASKER

Well I've just read in the Microsoft help that Word is ALWAYS enabled as the email editor and you cannot disable it.

the_endjinn🇬🇧

Those instructions look fine, beyond removing all the rules and starting again I'm not sure what you can do. Also, Outlook 2007 and above always use the Word rendering engine for HTML and Rich Text, there is no option to switch back to IE rendering but then you shouldn't need to.

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eyetealady🇬🇧

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So it doesnt look as though there is a solution to this problem does it? I have now found some software which will hopefully do the job instead of Outlook rules. Produced by 4Team Corp it is an Email responder so I'll trial it and hopefully it will do the job, at an additional cost.

lloydsystems🇦🇫

Is your mail server MS Exchange? If yes, what version. If it's an Exchange mail Server, do you guys have Exchange OWA (Outllok Web Access) configured. That's another way to access a mail account and apply the OOO (out-Of-Office) and Auto-reply for your customer.

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eyetealady🇬🇧

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eyetealady🇬🇧

ASKER

it seems there is no answer to the question - what I want to do is not possible outside Exchange so I am going to use alternative software to achieve the result needed.

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Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. Although often used mainly as an email application, it also includes a calendar, task manager, contact manager, note-taker, journal, and web browser.