One of my websites, Media UK, sends quite a quantity of email out every day: over eight thousand emails, I’d estimate - things like topic notifications, as well as media news and jobs. It sends these emails from an admin email address.

Normally, you’d set up an address for this which automatically (and silently) deletes all incoming email. Most people use “donotreply@” or “no_reply@” as an email address of this type. When I set the site up to send automated email, in 1999, this wasn’t as standard - and, in any case, I’ve found that I get an interesting amount of people replying to these automated messages. Yesterday for example I got a nice reply (to a clearly automated mail) wishing the webserver a happy easter; at other times they’re genuine customer queries which I respond to. The only drawback I have with this plan is the amount of ‘out of office’ replies I get.

I rarely set ‘out of office’ replies. They’re named wrong, for a start. Just because I am ‘out of the office’, I’m not unable to read emails, nor to deal with them in an efficient way. (Indeed, if I’m out of the office, I’m more likely to be able to deal with email in many cases.) They ought to be named “vacation responder” or something. It is genuinely useful to know when someone’s away for two weeks. It’s not useful to know if someone’s away for the next hour.

Further, out of office replies are horrid things because they confirm email addresses to spammers (or, worse, mailbomb an innocent person’s email account) - and they are made all the more horrid because there is no standard for them, so it’s quite difficult to spot them. If we -must- send these to each other, why does every single email program send them differently? Why isn’t there an RFC for this?

So here’s my way of removing them. This is the result of nearly two yeas of experience with out-of-office messages, and it seems to work. So far.

Using Gmail (the eventual destination of my emails), you need to set two filters: one checking the subject, and one checking the body of the mail. I use ’skip inbox and delete it’; you might just want to apply a label. Naturally, this works with Outlook too.

Check the subject for…

“(Away)” OR “out of office” OR “Automated Reply Re:” OR “out of the office” OR “ikke til stede” OR “Yahoo! Auto Response” OR “Automatic Reply”

Check the body for…

“I am away on leave” OR “or wait for me to respond.” OR “I’m now working off-site until” OR “Thanks for emailing me - I will try and reply to your email promptly.” OR “I am unable to respond to your email until ” OR “I’m now out of the office” OR “I am away at the moment” OR “I am out the office until” OR “I am out of the office” OR “I am currently out of the office” OR “I’m now on leave” OR “I am now on holiday” OR “away from her desk until” OR “away from his desk until” OR “out of the office all day today”

Users of Gmail can just type these in: if you’ve not realised, I discovered, though trial and error, that “OR” works just fine with Gmail filters. (Or, if you’re in the UK, Google Mail filters, not that I’m typing that for the extra Technorati links or anything).

Have I missed any? Are you a member of the anti-out-of-office club too? Let me know in the comments.

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