Hi all. i have noticed a few times recently when I have e-mailed people, they send an automatic reply straight back saying they are away for a while. How do I do this? I am on OE 6 and win-xp.
Ta...

Big Red

At a guess some of these people that you mail will probably have work email addresses which run from an internal server at that organisation, this is the most common way to get this type of mail as it is on 24/7. it deals with your message then if you have set the Out of Office assistant (Outlook) to on then will reply with your chosen message.

You say you are on OE6 and WinXP but you don't mention your type of internet connection. I only mention this as if you have an always on DSL connection you could leave OE running and get it to automatically process the mail that comes in to you to send replies in your absence.

To do this you can go into OE then Tools then Message rules then mail in here set up a rule that if any mail comes in to your email address then reply with a set message. If you are on a dial up connection then you can set it to dial up but this does start to get more complicated and just occasionally it forgets to hang up.

There are also ISP's out there who will set this service up for you on their servers but having never tried this I can't comment.

This may not be the wisest course of action if your address is targetted by "spam". You may not want the spammers to have confirmation that your address is active.

fobotcso

True - however I find that no matter how hard you try to get off their lists the more mail you get. The easiest way not get spam is never ever give out your email address. If you need to give out an address set up a Hotmail account.

If you set up your rule through OE you can specify who you want to send replies to you can also use these rules to delete any junk mail, it doesn't work perfectly but it is better than not being able to do it.

If you buy your own domain you should be given the option to have a personal control panel. From there you can set auto forwarders and auto responders. PM me if you want more details.

Paul,

As has been said, autoreplies are usually handled by "corporate type" servers. This is becuase the the reply needs to be sent as soon as a message is recieved, not when it is read. If the autoreply is only created by Outhouse or whatever, when you go online, it's not so useful -- if useful at all :bored: .

As expedite_climb has explained, if you have a managed domain from an ISP, they should be able to provide this service (properly, see below.)

* For some definition of "need" -- users seem to find autoreplies essential, for some reason. They can cause mail cascades if not configured correctly (your autoreply triggers somebody else's autoreply, which triggers yours.... :* ) They are a pain on mailing lists and often cause email address leaks, at best facilitating spam, at worst revealing sensitive addresses in breach of the DPA. But since when has something being "not a good idea" ever stopped people from wanting to do it... :suspect: