How can I set up a recurring automatic reply during specific hours?

They won't do it just to annoy us.

Hello,

Is there an update on the ability to make this recurring? A current, and much needed, trend is for people to establish boundaries and expectations around email correspondence. It seems that this would be something Microsoft could support.

Please considering allowing reoccurring options, similar to that found on the calendar.

Keith

Hi Eleni

Is there a chance this will be something that is developed? I am in a similar situation working part-time; I like to set an out-of-office on my non-working days, Monday/Thursday, and it becomes annoying to have to turn it on when I leave on Friday and Wednesday and then remember to turn it off on Tuesday and Friday.

I work a 4-day week so I am in the same situation. This function exists in the Outlook calendar when scheduling events etc., so I can't understand why it's not in Outlook emails. It's very annoying and will lead to mistakes when you forget one week or you're not able to access your emails etc. We should not have to set up an overcomplicated rule or generally change how our Outlook operates and automates emails, to implement such a very basic need.

Anyone who still has this issue, it can be easily done in Power Automate. You may be able to set it up yourself, or you can ask your IT team and point them here.

We're going to leverage Power Automate and create two custom flows.

For creating recurring OOO replies for every weekday, please follow the below.

1. Go to https://make.powerautomate.com/ and login with your Microsoft credentials
2. Click the Create button on the left and then Scheduled Cloud Flow.
3. Name it Turn On Auto Replies, set to repeat every 1 week, unselect Saturday and Sunday, and click Next. The Time selection doesn't matter with this window.
4. The next window you'll have a blank slate with a small Recurrence rectangle in the middle. Double click the Recurrence box and it will open options. Set the Hours and Minutes to your desired preference then Save at the top.
5. Click the + button below the Recurrence box and it will pop open a search menu. Search for Set up automatic replies (V2 is what I picked) and click it to add another step to our flow.
6. Double click the Setup auto replies box and use the settings Status to Scheduled and External Audience to All. Write your External Reply Message how you'd like.

If you are not seeing these parameters it's because they're hidden under the Advanced Parameters menu at the top.

7. Click Save again.
8. Now we create another flow to shut them off every morning. This one is much easier. Create another, separate weekly Scheduled Cloud Flow and unselect Saturday and Sunday.
9. Double click Recurrence and set the hours and minutes you want auto replies to be shut off. Click Save.
10. Click the + again and search for Setup auto replies. Double click the new auto reply box and set the Status to Disabled. Click Save at the top.

The final flow of the week will occur on Friday at 5PM so replies stay on and don't get turned off until Monday at 8AM.

You can test these out by manually Run-ning them or hit the "Test" button on top. If you don't see auto-replies flip on in Outlook for desktop, send yourself a test email and see it working.

This is a basic feature that existed 15 years ago. Honestly unbelievable that it has been removed in favour of so many other useless features. It is unbelievably frustrating that the needs of quite literally millions of users is being ignored.