How to Stop Receiving Out of Office Replies in Outlook
Are you tired of receiving out of office replies every time you send an email to someone who is on vacation or unavailable? Outlook’s out of office feature is a useful tool for notifying senders that the recipient is not available, but it can also be quite frustrating when it keeps sending automated replies. In this article, we will guide you through the steps to stop receiving out of office replies in Outlook.
1. Check Your Outlook Settings
The first step to stop receiving out of office replies is to ensure that your Outlook settings are configured correctly. To do this, follow these steps:
– Open Outlook and click on the “File” tab.
– Select “Options” from the menu.
– In the Outlook Options window, go to the “Mail” tab.
– Under the “When replying to a message” section, make sure the “Automatically reply to non-delivery reports and out of office messages” option is unchecked.
2. Disable Out of Office Messages for Specific Contacts
If you only want to stop receiving out of office replies from specific contacts, you can disable the feature for them individually. Here’s how:
– Open the email from the contact whose out of office replies you want to disable.
– Click on the “Reply” button.
– In the “To” field, click on the name of the contact and select “Add to Outlook Contacts.”
– Once the contact is added to your Outlook contacts, right-click on their name and select “Properties.”
– In the “Properties” window, go to the “Out of Office” tab.
– Uncheck the “Automatically send out of office replies” option and click “OK.”
3. Update Your Contact List
If you have a large contact list, it might be helpful to update your contacts to remove out of office replies. Here’s how:
– Open your contact list in Outlook.
– Select all the contacts you want to update.
– Right-click on one of the selected contacts and choose “Properties.”
– In the “Properties” window, go to the “Out of Office” tab.
– Uncheck the “Automatically send out of office replies” option and click “OK.”
– Repeat the process for all the selected contacts.
4. Utilize Outlook Rules
Outlook rules can help you automatically stop receiving out of office replies from specific senders. To create a rule, follow these steps:
– Open Outlook and click on the “File” tab.
– Select “Rules & Alerts” from the menu.
– In the “Rules & Alerts” window, click on “New Rule.”
– Select “Apply rule on messages I receive” and click “Next.”
– Choose “Check messages when they arrive” and click “Next.”
– Select “Apply this rule only to messages from people or groups” and click “Next.”
– Enter the email addresses or contact names you want to exclude from out of office replies and click “Next.”
– Choose “Stop processing rules” and click “Finish.”
By following these steps, you should be able to stop receiving out of office replies in Outlook. Remember to regularly review your Outlook settings and contact list to ensure that you are not receiving unwanted automated replies.
