Outlook and "Out of Office" auto replies

[PoopyPants]

ok why cant i get the outlook out of office auto reply to work.

according to M$ Technet and everything i find its telling me to go to Tools then Out of Office Assistant and set up my auto replies for when im out of the office.

well there is no out of office reply.

i have office 2003 at work, and some of us have 2002... none of us have the ability to setup out of office auto replies.

i even tried creating a rule using a template and it still dont work..

is there a third party add-on anywhere that works or does anyone know how to set it up so that it actually works.?

 

[Czar]

Do you have exchange or are you using a pop3 accounts?

 

[PoopyPants]

pop3

 

[Allanv]

are you using a exchange server?

 

[acsguitar]

I'm not sure if pop3 can do out of office.

Your company also most likley can chose to block that feature

 

[PoopyPants]

no we arent blocking it,, we want it lol...

and no where in technet does it mention the need for an exchange server so lets assume its ok for pop3

you can set it up to autoreply with a template. under rules.

but the template its asking for is not a template that you can create i guess.

it tells you to create a plain text email with your out of office reply and save it as an outlook template... but when you go to save it there is no option to save it as a template. you can save it as a DOT file with yes is a templae but when you go and try to add that to the template part of the rule it doesnt recognise it as the template its looking for. its looking for a template with a really freaky file extension i cant recall what it is....

 

[Czar]

out of office I think only works with exchange since it is server based, with pop3 you would have to let the outlook client handle the replies

 

[PoopyPants]

let the client handle the replies meaning creating a normal rule where its set to auto reply with a set template ? as i mentioned above ?

 

[redbeard1]

You need an Exchange server to use the real out of office feature. If you follow MS directions on how to create and use the out of office template without an exchange server, the "catch" is that computer you set it up on, needs to be running while you are away, and have Outlook open so it can reply to senders.