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Listen to the podcast: Out of Office Replies are Evil. 
Transcript
This is Leo Notenboom with news, commentary and answers to some of the many questions I get at askleo.info.
Yes, you heard right, most out of office replies are evil.
Out of office replies, often termed "oof" or oof, for out of facility, are those automated replies you get to an email you send someone when they are ... well, out of the office. They'll tell you something like "I'm out of the office this week, and not checking email" or something along those lines.
Seems like a good idea, right? Helpful, even. And it can be good idea, IF two conditions are met:
1) The out of office reply is sent to each sender exactly once, no matter how many times they send email.
2) The out of office reply is never sent to mailing lists.
For some corporations, there's an optional third rule: the out of office reply is never sent outside the company.
So where does the evil come in? Certainly when either rules one and two are broken - or even worse, when both are. If rule 1 is broken, you annoy everyone who might need to send you an email for your eventual return... no mater how many. If rule 2 is broken, your reply goes out to a list of people whether or not the discussion had anything to do with you. And if BOTH are broken, every message to a mailing list causes your out of office message to get sent ... again and again and again ... flooding the mailing list. That's Evil.
But wait, there's more.
You might just have told anyone who drops you an email that you're on a trip and your home is available for burglary.
And
You've just replied to any SPAM that you receive, thus validating your email address. Prepare to get LOTS more spam.
In general, OOF's are a good idea that, 99% of the time, have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Just say no.
Leave me a comment on this podcast - visit askleo.info and enter 8646 in the go to article number box on the home page. I'd love to hear from you.
This is a presentation of askleo.info, a free on-line technical question and answer service. Hundreds of questions and answers are online and ready to help solve your computer problems. New questions and answers are added daily.
That's askleo.info.
Article C2368 - June 13, 2005
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
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Geoff: I think that particular aspect of common courtesy
gets lost in the email-overload that often piles up while
people are away from the office. I know once I get an OOF I
*assume* that the person did NOT get the message, and that
it's on me to resent some time after they return.
Leo
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Posted by: Leo at June 18, 2008 1:38 PMtGgn+9iX4EvuHBqCFJqw+BU=
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Exchange 2003 SP2 has the functionality to only send internally. We use have that setting enabled. It's located under Global Settings -> Internet Message Formats -> Advanced. Uncheck "Allow out of office responses"
Posted by: North2AK at June 23, 2008 5:34 PMI have never understood why the out of office assistant can't simply only reply to emails that successfully make it through my spam filter. Out of office assistant seems to reply to any and everything.
Posted by: Craig at March 6, 2009 3:01 PMOut of office assistant is only available if you are hooked up to a Microsoft Exchange server. If you are not you can emulate it using rules, and you can also set the rule to respond to mailing lists and only reply once to each sender.
I found an easy to understand example on how to do this here: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/outlook/send-out-of-office-response-outlook-2007-exchange-server/
Posted by: Baxter at October 12, 2009 2:21 PM'Out of office ' evil? Perhaps.
Annoying - certainly.
For some unknown reason my pc sends a random response to people who have e-mailed me telling them I am away until Sept. 1st. I wish I was but what can I do to rid myself og this?
10-Feb-2011
Posted by: Patrick at February 10, 2011 5:37 AM