Out of office/ Vacation reply to senders 

You can set up Out of office message, to automatically reply to the emails you receive while you are away. When you are away for a vacation or a business trip or due to some other reason, the out-of-office message helps you to inform the sender about your absence. You can provide additional information to your senders by providing the alternate contact details, the date until when you are away or the alternate modes to reach you, in case of emergency.

You can also control whether you want to send automatic replies to everyone or just to the people available in your contacts or vice versa. The auto-response interval and other settings provide further control on when and to whom the out-of-office messages are being sent. 

Steps to configure Out of office message

1. Login to your Zoho Mail account
2. Click the Settings   icon.
3. Navigate to Out of Office from the Mail Settings. ​
4. Specify the Subject for your automated email.
5. Provide the 'Out of office' email content that should be sent to the senders.
   
6. Provide the Start/ End date and time for which you want to configure the out-of-office message.
7. By default, the out-of messages are sent all through the day. Choose the days on which you want to send the emails if you want the auto-response to be sent on specific days instead of all days.
   
8. Generally, Out-of-office emails are sent to all incoming emails including emails sent to you in To/ Cc/ Bcc/ your email aliases or the group email addresses. 
   • You can also choose to send auto-replies only to the emails sent directly to you and not to group email addresses or the emails in which you're kept in Cc/ Bcc.
9. You can choose to Mark as Out of office in calendar, as it would ensure that your colleagues do not schedule any important meetings on that day. When you choose this option, you can select any of the following options under Decline events automatically section:
   • Don't decline events
   • Decline new events only
   • Decline new and existing events
     
10. Choose the Auto-response interval using the options given below:
    • Reply once during the entire vacation period
    • Reply to consecutive emails from the same sender, every _ days
    • Reply to the same sender, even for emails received on the same day
      
11. In the Enable Out of office for menu select one of the options, 
    • If you want to send the out-of-office message only to the senders in your contact list, select Contacts.
    • On the contrary, if you want to send the out-of-office message only to the senders who are not in your contact list, select Non-Contacts.
    • If you want to send the out-of-office message to all the senders, irrespective of your contact list, select Everyone. 
      
12. Click Save to save your out-of-office email and the settings. 

By default, all the out-of-office messages will be saved in your Sent folder. You can change this and not save these messages in your sent folder by turning off the toggle at the bottom.

 Auto-response intervals

Setting  Auto-response Interval allows you to control the frequency in which the automatic emails are sent. The Auto-response Interval is the minimum number of days between the two subsequent automated replies to the same email address.

• Reply once during the entire vacation period: Choosing this option will send automatic reply to a sender's email address only once during the entire vacation period.
• Reply to consecutive emails from the same sender, once in _ days: If you receive 10 emails from the same sender on a particular day, sending 10 auto replies per day would flood their mailbox with your out-of-office messages. When you specify the Auto response Interval as 2 days, the particular email address will receive your out-of-office message only once in 2 days. The out-of-office message will not be sent to each and every email from the same sender. 
• Reply to the same sender, even for emails received on the same day: When you choose this option, the automatic replies will be sent to the same sender, even for consecutive emails being sent on the same day by the same sender. 

Inserting Signatures in Out of office messages

You can insert a signature to your Out of Office messages as well to add more professionalism to them. If there are multiple messages set up, you can add a different signature to each of them should you wish.

Steps to insert a Signature

1. Once you have configured your message, click on the Signature icon from the editor toolbar.
2. The Insert Signature window appears with the preset configured signatures. Select the signature you wish to insert. The selected Signature gets added in the editor area. To create or add a signature, refer to this page
3. Click Save.​