Most out of office replies fail the same way. They say the person is away and stop there, which leaves the sender to work out the rest. Wait, or chase someone else? Is this getting answered Tuesday, or in three weeks?
That guessing is what produces the follow-up, the second follow-up, and the message to a colleague asking whether anyone has heard from you.
A reply that answers those questions takes about forty words. This guide covers what those forty words need to contain, twenty templates with an internal and an external version of each, setup for Gmail, Outlook, Slack and shared inboxes, and the two things most guides skip: what you should never put in an auto-reply, and what happens when the person you named as backup is also away.
Out of Office Message Generator
Get an internal and an external version of your auto-reply in seconds
What a Working Out of Office Message Actually Contains
One change from the plan. I had Box 2 as a five-card grid of the message elements, but the prose below already covers those, and restating them in a card grid breaks the no-duplication rule. The box now holds the subject line formats instead, which is a genuine reference layer the prose cannot carry. The elements stay in prose where the reasoning belongs.
The sender has three questions, and only three
Every out of office reply is read by someone who wants to know one thing: what should I do now. That breaks into how long you are gone, whether you are reading anything, and who can help instead.
Most replies answer the first and skip the other two. That is why they generate follow-ups. Someone who knows you are away for two weeks and not checking email will route their request elsewhere. Someone who only knows you are away will email again on Thursday.
Give a return date, not a duration
“I am away for the next two weeks” forces the reader to check the date the email was sent and count forward. Half of them will not bother.
Name the day you are back at your desk, not the day your leave ends. If you return on a Monday and spend it clearing 400 emails, say you will be responding from Tuesday. Promising a same-day reply on your first morning back is a promise you will break.
Say whether you are reading email, and mean it
There are three honest positions here: no access, monitoring urgent messages only, and checking occasionally. Pick one and hold to it.
The failure mode is claiming no access and then replying to your manager within the hour. Once a colleague sees that, your auto-reply stops carrying any information and everyone escalates by default. This is also where planned leave and the handover conversation that should precede it do more work than any wording change.
Name a person, and check they agreed
Naming a backup contact who does not know they are the backup is worse than naming nobody. The sender routes an urgent request to someone with no context, no access, and no authority to act on it.
The backup needs three things before you leave: a heads up, the context on anything live, and the access to actually do something about it. Two of those are usually missing.
Set expectations for the return, not just the absence
The last line of a good auto-reply covers what happens after you are back. “I will reply to messages in the order they arrive and expect to be caught up by Wednesday” tells someone whether to resend.
Skip this and every sender who emailed you in week one resends in week two, which is how a two-week absence turns into a three-week backlog.
Subject lines get cut before anyone reads them
Mobile clients show roughly the first 40 to 60 characters, and an out of office reply is disproportionately likely to be read on a phone. Lead with the words that carry meaning and put the date at the end where truncation costs least.
Five Subject Line Formats That Survive Truncation
Out of office: [Name], back [date]
Around 39 characters. The default for annual leave, training and business travel, and the only format that works equally well for internal and external senders.
Use the short date form. “24 Jun” costs six characters, “24 June 2026” costs twelve and adds nothing.
Office closed: [Holiday], back [date]
Around 34 characters. Names the holiday so international senders understand why nobody is answering, which a generic closure notice does not achieve.
Leads with the organisation rather than the individual, so it works on a shared or departmental mailbox.
Out of office: [Name], on [leave type]
Around 40 characters. For parental leave, sabbaticals and long term absence, where naming a date you may need to move creates a second problem later.
Give the month in the body if you have one. Keep it out of the subject line where it reads as a commitment.
Slow replies: [Name] until [date]
Around 33 characters. For conference weeks, deadline crunches and the first days back from long leave, when you are present but not responsive.
Avoid the words “out of office” here. Senders who know you are in the building will read it as inaccurate and ignore the rest.
[Name] has left [Company]
Around 26 characters. States the position in the subject line so the sender does not need to open the message to know their contact is gone.
Never use “out of office” for a departure. Senders will assume a return and keep emailing an unmonitored mailbox.
20 Out of Office Email Templates by Scenario
Copy the one that fits, replace the bracketed text, and check the names before you switch it on.
The templates are grouped by situation rather than by tone, because the situation is what changes the wording. A holiday closure and a parental leave reply are not the same message written more or less formally. One is about an organisation being shut, the other is about a person being gone for months, and the useful content is different in each case.
Where the internal and external version genuinely differ, both are shown. That happens more often than most template lists admit. Colleagues need the escalation route, the project context and the honest reason. Clients need a return date, one name to contact, and nothing else. Sending the same message to both means one of those two groups gets the wrong thing, usually the client, who ends up reading your internal handover notes.
Every template assumes a real backup contact who has agreed to cover. If that is not in place, the templates will still send, but naming someone who does not know they were named creates a worse outcome than naming nobody. The coverage section further down deals with that properly.
Find the Right Template
| Your situation | Template | Versions | The detail people forget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual leave, one to two weeks | 1 | Internal External | Keep the escalation contact out of the external version |
| Away but checking email daily | 2 | Both | Only claim a daily check if you will actually do it |
| Out for one to three days | 3 | Both | Give the day you are back, not the day leave ends |
| Half day | 4 | Both | Say which half, morning or afternoon |
| Office closed for one public holiday | 5 | Both | Name the holiday, not just the closure |
| Extended shutdown or holiday period | 6 | Both | State plainly that the inbox is unmonitored |
| Holiday your senders do not observe | 7 | Both | Point to the offices that are still open |
| Sick leave, same day | 8 | Internal External | The external version never says sick leave |
| Sick leave, no return date | 9 | Internal External | Someone else should update this after a few weeks |
| Parental leave, date known | 10 | Internal External | External version gives the month, not the date |
| Parental leave, date not fixed | 11 | Both | Do not quote a date the employee can legally change |
| At a conference or industry event | 12 | Both | Name the event, never the hotel |
| Travelling for work or on a client site | 13 | Both | Explain the gap, do not promise a response time |
| Training or internal offsite | 14 | Internal | Say there is no laptop, or Slack fills up instead |
| Account manager with live accounts | 15 | External | Say what the backup can decide, not just who they are |
| Sales, deals in progress | 16 | External | Name the three things that count as urgent |
| Consultant or agency, delivery paused | 17 | External | Say the work stopped, not just that you are away |
| Support queue on reduced cover | 18 | Both | Give the normal turnaround and the current one |
| Shared inbox, outside working hours | 19 | Both | Include the time zone with the hours |
| Employee has left, successor named | 20 | Both | Third person, signed by the company |
| Employee has left, role still open | 20 | Both | Route to a team address, not an overloaded interim |
| At your desk but behind on replies | 21 | Both | Do not call it out of office |
Annual Leave and Short Absence
Standard annual leave, one to two weeks
Two versionsAnnual leave, checking occasionally
Internal and externalShort absence, one to three days
Internal and externalHalf day
Internal and externalPublic Holidays and Office Closures
Single public holiday
Internal and externalExtended shutdown or holiday period
Internal and externalHoliday the sender does not observe
Internal and externalSick Leave
Same day sick leave
Two versionsExtended sick leave, no return date
Two versionsParental Leave
Parental leave, return date known
Two versionsParental leave, return not fixed
Internal and externalBusiness Travel, Conferences and Training
Conference or industry event
Internal and externalClient site or business travel
Internal and externalTraining or internal offsite
InternalClient-Facing and Sales Roles
Account manager, live accounts
ExternalSales, active pipeline
ExternalConsultant or agency, billable work paused
ExternalShared Inboxes and Support Queues
Support queue, reduced cover
Internal and externalShared inbox, out of hours
Internal and externalDepartures and Delayed Replies
Employee has left, successor named
Internal and externalEmployee has left, role not yet filled
Internal and externalAt your desk, replies running behind
Internal and externalInternal and External Replies Are Not the Same Message
Most people write one auto-reply and send it to everyone. That is the single biggest quality gap in this category, and it is not a matter of tone.
The two audiences need different information
A colleague wants to know who is covering, what state your work is in, and who to escalate to if the backup is also away. They already know your reporting line and your projects, so naming them costs nothing.
A client wants to know when you are back, one person to contact, and whether their thing is going to slip. Everything else you give them is either noise or exposure.
Send the internal version externally and a client reads your handover notes, learns your manager’s name, and finds out that the Axis migration is paused. Send the external version internally and your team gets a polite message with no useful routing in it.
What changes between the two
The reason for absence is the clearest split. Colleagues can be told it is sick leave. Clients get “out of the office” and nothing more, which is also the answer for anything else you would rather not have sitting in a stranger’s inbox.
Escalation contacts stay internal. One name goes out, two names stay in. A client given two contacts will email both, and now three people are handling one request.
Project detail stays internal, always. Sales-side people often assume a client will appreciate the transparency of “the migration is on hold until 3 July”. What the client hears is that their work stopped and nobody told them until they happened to email.
Return dates are the exception that runs the other way. Internally you can give a precise date because colleagues understand it may move. Externally, for anything long, give the month. Clients treat dates as commitments.
Both mailbox systems support this natively
Gmail’s vacation responder has a checkbox limiting the reply to your organisation. Outlook gives you two separate text boxes, one for inside your organisation and one for outside, which is why the Outlook interface has confused people for twenty years. Neither costs you anything beyond writing the second version.
Almost nobody fills in the second box, and Outlook does not send anything externally until you do. If you have never deliberately switched on the external reply, every client who emailed you during your last holiday got silence.
The exception
If you work in a small team where colleagues and clients are effectively the same audience, or your work involves no confidential project detail, one message is fine. Do not build a two-version system to solve a problem you do not have.
What Changes Between the Two Versions
| Element | Internal | External | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reason for absence | Name it, including sick or parental leave | “Out of the office” and nothing further | Colleagues adjust what they ask of the backup. Senders outside the company do not need your health information |
| Named contacts | Backup plus an escalation route | One name only | Two names outside the company means the sender emails both and three people handle one request |
| Project detail | Status of anything live and where it sits | None | A client learning their work is paused from an auto-reply is a service failure, not transparency |
| Return date | Exact date, even if provisional | Exact date under two weeks, month beyond that | Colleagues understand dates move. Clients diarise them and email on the day |
| Phone number | Only if your team already has it | Never | An auto-reply answers every sender, including scrapers. Route urgent contact through a colleague or a main line |
| Tone | Matches how you normally write to the team | Slightly more formal, no in-jokes | The external reply reaches people who have never met you, including prospects and suppliers |
How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply
Outlook has two message boxes, Gmail has one
Outlook gives you separate messages for inside and outside your organisation. The external one stays off until you tick it, and Microsoft recommends restricting it to your contacts, because the alternative replies to every inbound email including newsletters and advertising.
Gmail cannot vary the message. The vacation responder sends one reply, with an optional restriction to people in your contacts. You can narrow who receives it, not change what it says. Setup steps are in Google’s vacation responder guide and Microsoft’s automatic replies guide. Online Tool Guides
It fires once per sender, not once per email
Gmail sends one response per sender every four days. Someone who emails you five times gets one reply, which is why colleagues occasionally report that your auto-reply is broken. Junk-filtered mail never triggers a reply at all.
Some accounts cannot do it
Automatic replies need an Exchange or Microsoft 365 account. POP and IMAP accounts in Outlook do not support the feature. The rule-and-template workaround only runs while Outlook is open, so it is no use on holiday. Set the reply in that account’s own webmail instead. Microsoft LearnMicrosoft Learn
Slack and Teams
Slack has a proper out of office status now, not just a status emoji. Anyone who mentions you in a channel receives a private message with your status details. Set an expiry, or you will still look absent a fortnight after you return. The message is visible only inside your organisation.
Teams and Outlook share one setting. Configure it in either and it applies to both. Setting both separately is how the dates end up contradicting each other.
Shared mailboxes
Add the mailbox as a separate account before setting the reply. Applying it from your own profile sets it on your mailbox instead. Assign the switch to a named person as part of the closure checklist, or the queue runs a Christmas notice into February.
Where the Setting Lives
Settings, See all settings, General tab, scroll to Vacation responder.
First day is required, last day is optional. Leave it blank and the reply runs until you switch it off.
One message only. The checkboxes narrow who receives it, they do not let you write a second version.
Classic desktop: File, Automatic Replies. Web and new Outlook: Settings, Mail, Automatic replies.
Fill both boxes. The external reply stays off until you tick it, so leaving it blank means clients get nothing.
Set the external option to contacts only unless you have a reason to answer every inbound sender.
Profile picture, Update your status, choose Out of office.
Set an expiry under Remove status after, or the status outlives the absence. Pause notifications from the same dialog.
Anyone who mentions you in a channel receives your status as a private message.
Profile picture, Set status message, Schedule out of office.
Toggle automatic replies and set the date range. Teams and Outlook share the same setting.
Configure it in one place only. Setting both separately is how the dates end up contradicting each other.
Add the shared mailbox as a separate account, then set automatic replies on it directly.
Setting it from your own profile applies the reply to your mailbox, not the shared one.
Name the person responsible for switching it on and off before the closure, not during it.
What Never Goes in an Out of Office Reply
An auto-reply answers strangers
Everything else you write goes to a chosen recipient. This one goes to anyone who has your address, including people who bought it, scraped it, or are testing whether it is live. That changes what belongs in it.
The exposure is not theoretical. An auto-reply confirming that a named person is away until a specific date, and that a named colleague is covering, is the raw material for a payment fraud attempt aimed at that colleague. It arrives from a compromised or lookalike address, references the absence accurately, and asks for something urgent while the usual approver is unreachable.
Travel details
Your dates plus your destination tells a stranger your house is empty and for how long. Say you are out of the office. Do not say you are in Bali until the 24th.
Your mobile number
There is no version of this that ends well. The number goes to every sender, is trivially harvested, and stays valid long after the absence. If something genuinely needs a phone route, name a colleague or a company main line.
Medical detail
“Out of the office” covers it. A diagnosis, a procedure, or a recovery timeline is a health record sitting in inboxes you do not control, and in many jurisdictions it is a category of data your employer is required to handle carefully.
Your full escalation chain
Your manager’s name, your director’s name, and your EA’s name in one message hands over a functioning org chart. One backup contact externally is enough.
Client names and project status
“The Axis migration is paused until 3 July” tells any sender who you work for and what state that work is in. Keep it internal.
Anything you would not say to a stranger
The test is simple. Read the message imagining it arriving at a competitor, a journalist, and someone who has never heard of you. If any line makes you uneasy, cut it.
What to Leave Out, and Why
Dates plus a destination tells a stranger your home is empty and for exactly how long.
Instead: say you are out of the office. Nobody emailing you needs the location.
It goes to every sender, is easily harvested, and remains valid long after the absence ends.
Instead: route urgent contact through a named colleague or a company main line.
A diagnosis or recovery timeline becomes a health record sitting in inboxes you do not control.
Instead: “out of the office” externally. Colleagues can be told it is sick leave, nothing more.
Manager, director and assistant in one message is a working org chart for anyone building a targeted approach.
Instead: one backup contact externally. Keep the chain in the internal version.
Naming an account and its status tells any sender who you work for and where that work has stalled.
Instead: keep status updates internal. External senders need a contact, not a progress report.
Humour that works with your team reads differently to a prospect, a regulator or a candidate you have not met.
Instead: keep the personality in the internal version if you want it at all.
Sending an Out of Office Reply to People in Other Countries
Write the date so it cannot be misread
24/06/2026 means June in most of the world and does not exist in the United States, where it reads as an invalid month. Write the month as a word. “Back 24 June” is unambiguous everywhere and costs you nothing.
Day names have the same problem in a smaller way. “Back Monday” is fine within a week. Beyond that, give the date.
State the time zone with any hours you quote
“Monitoring email 09:00 to 18:00” is meaningless to a sender eight hours away. Add the zone. If your reply goes to a genuinely global list, adding UTC alongside your local time removes the second calculation.
This matters most on shared inboxes and support queues, which is where the sender is most likely to be somewhere else and least likely to know your working pattern.
Explain the closure if the holiday is local
A sender in Frankfurt does not know why your Bangalore office went quiet for three days in October. Naming the holiday turns an unexplained silence into an understood one, and it takes four words.
This is worth doing even for holidays you assume are universal. Christmas closures vary by country in length and exact dates, and Easter, New Year and national days do not line up.
Point to the office that is open
If your company operates in more than one country, the useful thing in a closure message is not the apology, it is the alternative. Name the region that is working and how to reach it. Template 7 does this.
Do not promise a response time you cannot hold across zones
“I will reply within 24 hours” from someone whose working day starts when the sender’s ends is a promise that reads as broken even when it is kept. Say which day you will respond, not how many hours it will take.
Auto-Replies for Employees Who Have Left
This is not an out of office message
An out of office reply promises a return. A departure notice tells the sender to redirect. Vacation wording on a departure makes them do the wrong thing, which is wait.
Write it in the third person and sign it from the company. “I am no longer with the company” signed with the departed person’s name reads as though they are still answering their own mail.
Say the mailbox is not monitored
Without that line, senders reply to the original address anyway on the reasonable assumption that someone is reading it. State that nobody is, and the redirect gets used.
Redirect to a successor, or to a function
Templates 20 and 21 cover both. The failure case is naming an interim who is already carrying the departed person’s work on top of their own, which leaves the request sitting longer than if it had gone to a team address.
Set a closure date before the last day
Sixty to ninety days is the usual window. Long enough for regular contacts to update their records, short enough that the address does not linger.
An unwatched but valid mailbox is a standing security exposure, and it is exactly the profile an attacker wants. Whether mail gets forwarded to a colleague in the meantime is a question for whoever owns data protection at your company, not for the IT ticket.
Put the four fields on the offboarding checklist
Successor name, reply wording, closure date, forwarding decision. They belong with the equipment return and access revocation steps, because they are the four items nobody chases.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to say why I am out of the office?
No. “Out of the office” is enough for external senders, and it is the right choice for sick leave, bereavement and anything else you would rather not share. Colleagues can be told the reason if it changes what they ask of your backup.
Should I put my phone number in my out of office message?
No. An auto-reply answers every sender, including scrapers and spam bots, and the number stays valid long after you are back. Route urgent contact through a named colleague or a company main line instead.
Can I set different out of office messages for colleagues and clients?
In Outlook, yes. It has separate message boxes for inside and outside your organisation, and the external one stays off until you enable it. Gmail sends a single message and only lets you narrow who receives it.
How long should an out of office message be?
Around forty words. It needs a return date, whether you are reading email, and one person to contact. Anything beyond that is rarely read.
Why is my out of office reply not sending to everyone?
Gmail sends one reply per sender every four days, so repeat emailers only get it once. In Outlook, external replies do not send at all unless you have ticked the outside your organisation option.
What should the auto-reply say when someone has left the company?
Write it in the third person, signed by the company, and say plainly that the mailbox is not monitored. Name whoever has taken over the work, or a team address if the role is still open.
Can I use a funny out of office message?
Internally, usually yes. Externally it reaches prospects, suppliers and candidates who have no context for the joke, so keep the personality in the internal version.
When should I turn my out of office reply on?
The evening before your first day away, and off on the morning you return. Set the end date in the settings so it clears itself if you forget.
