A Complete Guide: Out of Office Not Working in Outlook
The Out of Office Assistant in Microsoft Outlook is a feature that allows the user to configure an automatic send reply in the account. It happens, when a person sends a message to a user, and at the same time the end-user is unavailable or out of the office. Then, Outlook sent a reply mail automatically on the behalf of a user to the personal address. From the business point of view, the Office assistant plays a very significant role. It will provide the relevant replies, even in the absence of employee in the office. Moreover, this feature is by default available for the users with a Microsoft Exchange account. However, Home users with non-Exchange accounts can also create an Out of Office template and send the reply automatically.
At times, it happens, people faced problem while using the assistant in Outlook account. So, after considering this issue, we will provide some suitable solution that lets the user understand how to Fix “ Out of Office not working in Outlook ” error in an efficient way. Before this, look at the different scenario in which Out of Office assistant does not perform properly.
Possible Scenario of out of office assistant not working in outlook in Exchange
In this section, we consider all the frequent situation in which the Automatic Reply Assistant (or Out of Office) does not work properly in Outlook Exchange account. Go through the different scenarios that are listed below:
- Automatic message send to outside the organization
- Automatic message send only once per address
- Automatic replies filtered out by Junk Email filters
Note:- These situations only occur on an Exchange Account and not in the Non-Exchange account.
Scenario #1: Out of Office Not Working in Outlook Outside the Organization
Solution: This functionality is basically designed for not sending the message to those addresses that do not exist within the organization Exchange environment. If the admin wants to send automatic replies outside the company, then change the Automatic Replies settings from My contacts only to Anyone outside my organization. After changing the settings, Out of Office will also be able to send the replies to those people who are not part of the organization.
Note: To prevent the account from the spam messages, set My Contacts only in the Automatic Replies Settings. By this, strange addresses are not capable to send the message to the user.
Scenario #2: Out of Office Send Replies Once Per Address
Solution: By default, the assistant reply only once per address. But, sometimes, users need to send a message to all the addresses again. So, in that case, the user should turn OFF Out of Office feature and then turn it back ON. Furthermore, if the users want to reply to every single message that has been received, then it can be done by the server-side rules. Hence, for this, the end user needs to contact Exchange administrator.
Note: For client-side rules, automatic replies begin with a rule to only send the reply once per address and Outlook should be rolling in order to complete the process.
Scenario #3: Automatic replies filtered out by Junk Email filters
Solution: The Microsoft Outlook Email Filter does not block delivery of junk email messages, but it moves the suspected spam to the Junk Email folder. Moreover, the Junk Email Filter folder is saved on the Server and can be open from any system. In a similar manner, Out of Office are the automated messages, they are more prone to filtered out by Junk Email Filters. After the filtering, the messages are available in Junk Email Folder rather than Inbox folder. So, for accessing those email messages users can access it from the server Junk folder.
The Final Words
In this article, we have described the following Out of Office not working in Outlook error, along with the appropriate solutions. According to the situation, users can opt the relevant solution and fix the problem in an absolute way.