Automatic replies (out of office messages)

Learn how to set automatic replies when you know you're going to be away from email using the Microsoft support pages. 

Automated email sending

If you are setting up a new service, system or piece of equipment, you may need to set an outgoing mail (SMTP) server to send automated emails. Find out more about how to set this up. 

Email forwarding

Use the instructions below to set up internal email forwarding. 

Internal email forwarding

Outlook for Mac
  1. Open Outlook for Mac and click the Home tab.
  2. Click Rules
  3. Select Edit Rules from the drop-down menu.
  4. Be sure that your mailbox is selected on the left under Server Rules then select the plus (+) sign near the bottom to add a rule.
  5. Change the rule name to Forward Email.
  6. Change the From drop-down, located under the When a new message arrives that meets all these conditions to All Messages.
  7. Under the Do the following, heading change Move to Folder to Redirect to.
  8. Type the email address you would like to forward to in the field.
  9. Ensure that the relevant redirect boxes are checked
  10. Do not apply other rules to messages that meet the same conditions
  11. Click Enabled
  12. Click OK.
Outlook for Windows
  1. Click the File tab.
  2. Click Manage Rules & Alerts.
  3. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, on the E-mail Rules tab, click New Rule.
  4. Under Start from a blank rule, click Apply rule on messages I receive and click Next.
  5. Under Step 1: Select condition(s), select the conditions that you want the messages to meet for the rule to apply.
  6. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click each piece of underlined text, specify values, and then click Next.
  7. Under Step 1: Select action(s), select forward it to people or public group.
  8. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click the underlined text for people or public group, specify the people or public group you want to forward messages to, and then click Next.
  9. Under Step 1: Select exception(s) (if necessary), select any exceptions that you want.
  10. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click each piece of underlined text, specify values, and then click Next.
  11. Under Step 1: Specify a name for this rule, enter a name.
  12. Under Step 2: Setup rule options, check the boxes for the options that you want.
  13. If you want to run this rule on messages that already are in the Inbox, check the Run this rule now on messages already in “Inbox" box.
  14. By default, the new rule is turned on. To turn off the rule, uncheck the Turn on this rule box.
  15. To apply this rule to all email accounts set up in Outlook, check the Create this rule on all accounts box.
  16. Click Finish.

Imperial does not support automatic email forwarding to external addresses as detailed in the Code of Practice 2 Electronic Messaging in section 4 'Mail forwarding, found in the Information Security Policy‌.