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

Anonymous
2024-01-31T22:31:14+00:00

I work in an industry where my clients may require urgent assistance outside of normal business hours. My business engages a third party to handle after-hours emergencies on behalf of the team, but we often receive complaints that clients cannot easily access the after-hours emergency contact number, despite it being available on our website and our after-hours voicemail. In most cases, clients will call the team and disregard the voicemail, then follow up with an email complaining that we're unavailable.

It would be beneficial to have the option to set up an automatic reply where the after-hours contact information is sent to clients when our staff are emailed between 5pm and 8:30am, 5 days per week.

I have tried using the rules feature and fiddled around with the automatic reply feature, but neither would allow me to set up a recurring automatic reply without setting a start and finish date/time. I also checked whether it's possible to synchronize an automatic reply with my calendar block-outs, but this wasn't possible either.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-11T06:58:37+00:00

    Absolute insanity.. like others here, I work business hours then have to do an on call week on/off and need to provide an OOO to assist during those odd hours.

    So you can set up reoccurring appointment in a calendar but not have the same function within the 'new and improved' (but not..) Outlook.

    Fix this basic business requirement to be functional and intuitive to those who are forced to use your product without choice.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-01-14T08:37:39+00:00

    What a terrible answer. The question is: how do I setup a RECURRING ooo. You give a whole story that everybody knows how to setup a single ooo and end with "unfortunately, there is no easy way to make the recurring automatic reply you need to enable this manually".

    If there is a complex way, tell us the complex way. If there is no way, just say that. This is just polluting the search for an answer on a good question.

    Thank you!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-11T20:27:10+00:00

    I only intern Monday and Wednesdays. Need something that comes on at EOD Monday and EOD Wednesday until the following Monday. I am an intern and I am NOT checking my email outside of my hours.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-25T21:49:27+00:00

    Wow! That's hilarious from where I'm standing! Was this the set up you both had? I was just about to set it up but will wait to hear back from you:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/i-need-a-recurring-automatic-reply/4b21dd73-e561-49a4-bd71-1f647d1a48a2

    My outlook rules page does not look anything like the ones in answer posted here. This is from 2 years ago and clearly out of date, but since it is locked we can't tell MS that we need an update to this answer.

    Still waiting on an answer of how to make the recurring out of office replies.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-17T10:38:10+00:00

    I don't remember how I started, but I have this flow in Power Automate (browser - I donwloaded later the app and it doesn't show me my flow...)

    Recurrence lets you set up the When

    and of course Set up automatic replies does then what it has to do, during the When you set up.

    But I hadn't yet the first Monday off after I've created the flow! So couldn't test yet. Should work however.

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