However, it really gets unpleasant when you are off (on a vacation) and you still keep getting emails to which you may have to respond to avoid irking clients or other important people in your line of work. This situation can be avoided if you set an automated vacation responder which immediately lets people know that you are out and cannot check your emails for the time being. We have previously discussed how to do this on Gmail and MS Outlook. Today will explore the same for Yahoo and Hotmail.
Setting Up Vacation Responses on Hotmail
Step 1: Log in to your Hotmail account and navigate to Options > More Options on the right side of the interface. Step 2: Under Managing your account section click on the link saying Sending automated vacation replies. Step 3(a): At times the feature is not activated if your account is relatively new (see image below). Click on the link to Verify your account immediately and get the feature activated. Step 3(b): Enter your mobile number as a part of the process (wherein you would be sent a verification code) and click on Next. Step 3(c): Wait till you receive the verification code. When it arrives, enter the code here and click on Next. Step 4: Navigate back to vacation responses and you would be able to see the newly activated interface. Select the radio button to make vacation replies active and compile your message. You can also choose to send the responses to all incoming messages or only to those from your contacts list. Save the settings and enjoy your vacation.
Setting Up Vacation Responses on Yahoo Mail
Step 1: Log in to your Yahoo account and navigate to Options > Mail Options at the top of the interface. Step 2: On the left pane, under Mail Options, select Vacation Responses to bring up the configuration panel. Step 3: Check the option to enable auto responses and compile your message. You may choose to retain a sample copy as well. Step 4: For your convenience, you may create another piece of response and associate the reply to be sent to messages from specific domains (maximum two domains). Shown below is one such automated response as will be received by the senders of emails to you.
Conclusion
Vacation response is a cool feature that’s common to most email services. And if you use it properly you can actually take days off from office in totality. If you are someone who’s kinda disciplined in regularly replying emails then this is something you must do before heading out. Give them a try next time you plan to go out :).
