Table of Contents
Do you have a Gmail account, need to take some time off work but don’t know how to set up an auto-reply in your Gmail account?
This process lets your clients and team members know you won’t be available via an automatic email.
Using an auto-reply with your Gmail is important to set up if you’re out of the office and you want to notify your contacts or people trying to reach you via email with an automatic email response.
How To Setup Auto Reply In Gmail?
In this tutorial, we are going to share how you can simply set up a Gmail auto-reply within Gmail using the ‘Vacation responder’, so you can learn how to enable an out-of-office email message and relax while you’re out of the office!
1. Getting Started With Gmail
Firstly, you’ll need to log in to your Gmail account.
If you don’t currently have a Gmail account and would like to learn more about how to set one up, watch our complete beginners guide here and get started with Gmail for free today.
Before we get started, it’s important to note that this process is exactly the same for both a free Gmail and a paid Google workspace account.
Read more: How to create a free business email with Gmail
2. How To Enable Out Of Office And Set Up Gmail Autoreply
Let’s meet you inside your Gmail account and get stuck into learning how to use Gmail auto-reply!
To set up your Gmail auto-replies:
- Simply navigate up to ‘Settings’ in the top right-hand corner of your Gmail account (see screengrab).
- Click on ‘See all settings’.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page to ‘Out-of-office AutoReply’
This is where you can simply customize and set up an automatic email reply when you’re out of the office.
To do that:
- Simply come down and tick ‘Out of Office AutoReply on’.
- Click the field next to ‘First day’.
- This will bring up a calendar.
- Simply click the day you want to turn on your autoreply for.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we’re going to select ‘16th July’.
- Select ‘Last day’ if you know the date you’re returning to the office and select the date from the calendar.
For us, we’re setting this up for a specific period where we’re going to be on holiday, so we will select ‘1st August’.
That means our auto-reply will turn off on the 1st of August.
If you’re not sure when you’ll be returning to the office:
- Uncheck the ‘Last day’ box.
Once you’ve selected your out-of-office dates:
- Come down and add a subject in the field next to ‘Subject’.
Once you’ve added a subject identifying that you’re out of the office:
- Add the message of your automatic email reply under ‘Message’.
As you can see, we’ve added our out-of-office auto-reply email!
Take the time to create an informative email response that explains your situation, and also provides resources for those that are trying to reach you.
For example, we’ve added:
‘If you have an urgent request, please send your email to support@sydneo.co.nz’ within our message.
This is an email that our contacts who can send urgent requests to.
We’ve also added a link to provide more information, and we’ve identified how long we’re going to be on holiday.
Before you click ‘Save changes’ and activate this out-of-office auto-reply:
- Tick or untick ‘Only send a response to people in my contacts’.
Keep this unticked if you want to send this auto-reply to every email that you get sent.
Once you’ve done that:
- Come down and click ‘Save changes’.
And just like that, you’ve enabled your vacation responder (your Gmail out-of-office auto reply)!
Read more: How To Create A Professional Business Email
3. Manually Disable Your Gmail Auto Reply
If you want to disable your auto-reply manually:
- Simply navigate back up to ‘Settings’ in the top right-hand corner.
- Click on ‘See all settings’ again.
- Scroll down to the bottom of your settings page.
- Tick ‘Out of Office AutoReply off’.
- Click ‘Save changes’ to disable your auto-reply.
And that is how to set up auto-replies in Gmail!
That is all we wanted to cover in this brief tutorial helping you set up automatic replies in Gmail.
We hope you gained value and are now confident in how to use the Gmail auto-reply feature ‘Vacation responder’ to set up your Gmail out-of-office replies.
Read more: How To Create FREE Business Emails with Zoho Mail
Gmail ‘Out Of Office’ (Video Tutorial)
Watch our brief video tutorial on how to set up an auto-reply in Gmail and how to enable your out-of-office message, so you can ensure everything is taken care of while you’re out of the office!
