If you will be out of the office (or otherwise away from your email), people who send you messages may wonder why you haven't responded. Outlook's Out of Office assistant lets you create a reply that will be sent once to each person who sends you a message.

Please keep in mind:

• The auto-reply function lives on the Exchange server, so you do not need to leave Outlook running on your computer for it to work.
• Your messages will be delivered to you exactly the same way whether you have auto-reply turned on or off.
  (This means it doesn’t hold any of your e-mail, you can check for new messages and respond to them while the auto-reply is on.)
• If you did not specify a start and end date and time, remember to come back to the assistant upon your return to the office, and turn off the auto-reply feature.
• The text you enter for your auto-replies will be saved even after you turn this feature off. This is a good thing, because it means that the next time you want to use auto-reply, you won't have to create your message from scratch. Just review and update your text, and turn it back on.
• Not in the office and need to set it up?  You can go to any computer with Internet access and use these instructions: http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/owapp/howto/out-of-office-2010.cfm

You can choose to include and exclude people based on these categories:

• Inside My Organization - this category is only those people who have accounts on CIT's Exchange server, this includes Cornell’s faculty and staff.
• Outside My Organization - this category is everyone who isn't inside.  The "Outside" group is broken down into two smaller groups:
  • My Contacts only - only people who (1) are not "inside" and (2) have an entry in your Contacts are in this group.
  • Anyone outside - and this is everybody else.

CIT’s instructions to set up an Auto-Reply

http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/outlook2010/howto/email/out-of-office.cfm

Watch How I Set Up My Auto-Reply: http://screencast.com/t/qaeTIRmu