Outlook: Activating the Out of Office Assistant (versions 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007)

By Mary Hazel McDermott

Top tips to get you ready for your yuletide break.

Before you leave on vacation or even a long weekend, it is a good idea to set up an Out of Office message. This allows Outlook to reply automatically to each person that sends you a message when you are not there. Outlook replies only once to each person to avoid creating a large volume of messages.

Turning on the out of office message:

1. Click on the Tools menu and click on Out of Office Assistant. (If you do not see Out of Office Assistant, the option may be disabled; call the help desk for assistance.)
2. Select “I Am Currently Out Of The Office.”
3. Set up your AutoReply message.
4. Click OK.

Turning off the out of office message:

1. Click on the Tools menu and click on Out of Office Assistant. (If you do not see Out of Office Assistant, the option may be disabled; call the help desk for assistance.)
2. Select I Am Currently In The Office.
3. Click OK.

In Outlook 2007, depending on your mail server setup, you may see additional options for sending Out of Office auto-replies only during a specified date range, and for setting different auto-replies for messages received from addresses outside of your organization.

Lotus Notes: Activating the Out of Office Assistant (versions 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 8.5)

By Ronnie Merritt and John Grandinetti

Letting others know you are out of the office for a period of time can make it easier for them to get their work done. This tip will show you how to set up an Out of Office message in Lotus Notes — which will, in turn, make you a better colleague.

Notes 6, 6.5, 7

1. Open Your Mailbox — make sure you are on the server copy if you have a local replica.
2. Click on the Actions menu, select Tools, and choose Out of Office.
3. On the Dates tab, set the dates you are leaving and returning.
4. On the Out of Office Message tab, you can customize your message by changing the default text that appears inside the frames.
5. The Special Messages tab can be used for sending customized e-mails to specific people. To use this feature, enter the desired recipient(s) in the To field on this tab and type your custom message in the frame below.
6. The Exceptions tab may be used to set Notes to not reply to certain senders.
7. Once you have set all desired options, click Enable at the bottom of the dialog box.

Notes 8, 8.5

1. At the top of your message list, click the More button, then select Out of Office.
2. Enter the day you are leaving and the day you will be back in the office. You may also have a checkbox called “Specify Hours,” which enables you to choose the time of day you are leaving and when you will return. (This feature may not be available depending on how Notes is set up on your server.)
3. Below those fields, you will see three tabs. Click the first tab, Standard Notification. There you will enter the subject of the Out of Office message you want to send to people.
4. Below that is a checkbox called Append return date to subject; checking this will add your return date to the subject line.
5. Next, click in the Additional body text field and add any text you want to appear in the message body.
6. On the other two tabs, you can create exceptions for when you do not want to send your standard Out of Office message.
7. On the Alternate Notification tab, create an alternate subject and body, and enter the addresses or domains that you want to receive the alternate message.
8. On the Exclusions tab, enter the conditions under which you do not want to send any Out of Office message — such as when the received messages have a particular subject or sender, when the message is sent to a particular group, or when the message comes from an Internet address.
9. When you are done, click Enable and Close to turn on the Out of Office notifications.

How to Use a BlackBerry to Set the Out of Office Message (BlackBerry, all versions)

By Joel Reeves

If you have left the office already and forgot to set your away message, there is no reason to worry. Using these steps, you can turn on the Out of Office message while you are traveling.

1. From the Home screen, go into Messages, display the menu, and choose Options.
2. Choose E-mail Settings.
3. Scroll down to the Use Out of Office Reply section and change the setting from No to Yes.
4. Type the text you want for your Out of Office message.
5. Display the menu and choose Save.

To turn off the Out of Office message, follow these same steps, and change the Out of Office setting back to No.

BlackBerry: Handling mail attachments remotely (BlackBerry, all versions)

If you are using a BlackBerry with OS 4.5 and higher, you have the ability to open/edit attachments using a program called Documents To Go. If you receive an attachment and choose to open it, you will be presented with two choices — “View” or “Edit with Documents To Go.” If you choose the former, the attachment will be viewed using the built-in BlackBerry Attachment program. If you choose the latter, the attachment will be opened using Documents To Go, which enables you to do basic editing of the attachment (editing and selecting text, cut/copy/paste, etc). This program will also maintain many of the formatting features as if you were looking at the attachment on a full-size computer.

Outlook: How to Assign Tasks to Others (versions 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007)

By Mary Hazel McDermott

When you take time off, there are certain things in the office that still have to be done. You may have already created a task to remind you to do them, or you may be so used to doing them that you do not need a reminder. But someone else filling in for you will not have the same routine and will appreciate the reminder.

Creating a task can provide several benefits, including sending a reminder to the person it is assigned to, creating a record of who it is assigned to, and providing confirmation when the task is complete. There are two methods in our tip; the first is about assigning an existing task, and the second starts with creating the task.

To assign an existing task to a colleague:

1. Click on the Go menu (Outlook 2000 and 2002: click on the View menu and select Go To), and choose Tasks.
2. Right-click the task to be assigned to someone else.
3. Choose Assign Task from the shortcut menu.
4. Enter the recipient’s e-mail address in the To field.
5. Click the Send button.

To assign a new task to a coworker:

1. Click on the File menu, select New, and click Task.
2. Click the Assign Task button on the Standard toolbar (Outlook 2007: The Assign Task button is on the Task tab of the Ribbon, in the Manage Task group).
3. Enter the recipient’s e-mail address in the To field.
4. Type a short description for the task in the Subject field.
5. Select the start date and due date for the task.
6. Set the status, priority, and completed percentage for the task.
7. Select “Keep an updated copy of this task on my task list” to save a copy of the updated task.
8. Select “Send me a status report when this task is complete” to have Outlook notify you when the recipient marks the task as completed.
9. Type a message or details for the task in the message body.
10. Click Send.

A reminder is automatically created for the task and pops up on the due date. Now you know that the vital tasks you are leaving behind will be taken care of while you are gone.

Have any out-of-office horror or success stories? E-mail them to us. Happy holidays.

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While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods.

Although I have never tried to get out of an assignment by saying a dog ate my homework, I have fouled up plenty, and confessing was quite difficult in some cases. But, what I have learned over the years is that if you ask for help, you will commit fewer blunders and have less mess to clean up.*

Back to the government e-mail issue. According to an article by Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau, the whole mess stemmed from a Domino/Notes-to-Microsoft Exchange migration. The old archiving system was phased out, but the new one was never implemented. From that point on, Thibodeau explains, the government manually archived messages. The result was millions of “missing” e-mails.

Jump back to March 2008. Computerworld blogger Douglas Schweitzer, while reporting about the missing e-mails, asserted that by not automating its archiving, the government went against what is “considered ‘fundamental principles that well-run private companies adhere to routinely.’”

Routinely?

While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods. This apathy’s driving force is money, or lack thereof. (In a financial crisis, the IT budget’s the first to be cut.) The result is corporate workers who have no choice but to “wing it” and find their own workarounds. The government’s gaffe demonstrates just how much money “winging it” will save you.

Read Thibodeau’s piece here; Schweitzer’s here; and NPR’s here.

*By offering employees software training and support, companies can make it OK to ask for help, despite this culture’s innate “by-the-bootstraps” attitude.

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