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Set or Remove a Vacation Notice

What is it?

If you expect that you won't be checking your e-mail for a while, you can set up a vacation notice or out of office notice. After you set this up, anyone who sends you an e-mail message will automatically receive a reply to let them know you're not checking e-mail for a while. This feature enables you to set expectations correctly regarding when they should expect to hear from you.

How does it work?

  1. Set (or enable) the vacation or out of office notice. (See below.)

  2. You specify what the auto-reply message says.

    Avoid including confidential information -- anyone who sends you e-mail will automatically receive your reply, including spammers. (See Disguising E-mail Addresses below.)

  3. When you're able to check mail again, remove (or disable) the vacation notice and continue receiving e-mail as usual.

How to Set or Remove a Vacation or Out of Office Notice

Outlook Web Access

  1. Log in to Outlook Web Access.
  2. Select the Options button.
  3. Complete the Out of Office Assistant section.
  4. Select the Save and Close button at the top of the screen.

Outlook

  1. Start Outlook.
  2. Select the Out of Office Assistant from the Tools menu.

Entourage 2004

Unfortunately, Entourage 2004 does not support this feature, but you can use the instructions for Outlook Web Access instead.

Entourage 2008

  1. Start Entourage 2008.
  2. Select Out of Office... from the Tools menu.

Disguising E-mail Addresses

To set a vacation notice that notifies others of a new e-mail address but disguises it from e-mail address harvesting, insert extra, random characters in your e-mail address then describe what needs to be done to reveal your real e-mail address. For example:

Beginning October 1, 2009, my new e-mail address will be claudius47.galenXQZ@alumni.ucsf.edu. This e-mail address has been disguised to thwart spammer harvesting of e-mail addresses. Please remove digits and capital letters from the e-mail address before using.

Messages disguised in this manner are easy for legitimate recipients and difficult for spammers to determine that claudius.galen@alumni.ucsf.edu is your e-mail address.

Additional Information

Although it's called a "vacation notice" or "out of office notice," you can use it whenever you expect to be away from e-mail -- not just vacations, and you can use it even if you don't have your own office. "Vacation notice" and "out of office notice" are simply arbitrary names given to a feature which might better be called "away from e-mail automatic reply."

To Resolve Problems

To resolve problems with setting up a vacation or out of office notice, call UCSF Customer Support at 415/514-4100.

Shortcut to This Page

To reach this page quickly or share it with others, use pharmacy.ucsf.edu/go/vacation, which redirects to a longer URL.

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