Letting people know that you are out on a vacation or for anything else is especially important if you use Gmail for professional emailing too (who doesn’t!). Vacation responders help to let people know about your status – you won’t be able to reply because you are away, and also any other detail like when you will be back. It’s very easy to set-up a vacation responder for your Gmail account. Think of vacation responders as an answering service for your email. If properly set up with the right kind of message, it’s a no effort way to enhance your professional image. So, open up Gmail and set up an automatic vacation response in just a few steps.
Steps for Setting Up Automated Vacation Response in Gmail
Step 1. Spot the ‘Gear’ icon on the upper right of your account page. Click on Settings on the dropdown. Step 2. On the General tab, scroll right down to the Vacation responder section. Enable it by clicking on Vacation responder on. Step 3. Enter the range of dates when you plan to be away, or just enter the start date for the vacation responder to kick in. Step 4. Enter a subject and compose the vacation response as you see fit. You can make it simple, detailed, or plain funny if your Gmail account is a personal one. Step 5. Put a check on the box next to Only send a response to people in my Contacts if you don’t want everyone who emails you to know that you’re away. Note: Google Apps users will also see an option to only send a response to people in the same domain. If you check both of these boxes, only people who are in your contacts and your domain will receive the automatic response. Step 6. Click on Save Changes to activate the vacation response. Gmail displays a banner on top of the page showing the subject line of your auto-response message. Click End now to stop Gmail from automatically sending the response. To edit the response, click Vacation Settings. Close your email and take off for your vacation. Your vacation responder will do the rest. Note: Spam emails and messages addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to will not receive a vacation response. Was this little byte of knowledge helpful? Do you see the utility of the automatic vacation responder?
