This threw me off (until I realized the date of SM's message) as I didn't have any Private Messages. Or PMS.

And it was SM who did help me on the issue back then - thank you again for your assistance!

In Outlook Exchange 2003, does anyone know of the Out of Office Auto Responder replies to each sender only once per Day or once completely. We just tested by sending three messages and only the first was responded to so obviously it only does at most once per day. However, I cannot wait until tomorrow to find out if I send another message if it will respond to that one.

The text in the dialog box under Tools > Out of Office Assistant just says "AutoReply only once to each sender with the following message" (and you can enter text in that box of course).

Yes, I know that I can manage that better with Exchange 2007, but I don't see that getting installed today.

I may just look at setting up a rule to autorespond to all messages, but I don't think it would catch an infinite loop (I experienced one of those many years ago and came back to several thousand messages).

Well, here at work (we run Outlook 2003) and if someone it out, I get an autoresponder once. This is only for emails within the firm.

It's been a while but that is my recollection as well. Once per person per time the Out of Office has been turned on.

Argh - that is what I am afraid of

I am worried about using a rule for the Auto Responder because of the infinite loop concern*


The situation I had a few years ago was when I had my AutoReponder on and someone I was corresponding with had HIS auto responder on. One of us sent the other a message right around the time we turned our auto responder. Our emails kept exchanging "Out of Office" emails every few minutes (I believe I was on a POP server at the time and had my email set to check every five minutes or so). I came back to an inbox with a thousand or so Out of Office messages from him.

Why is that an argh? Aren't we saying that what you fear won't happen?

I don't want just one email response per time the Out of Office AutoResponder is turned on. The boss is going to be gone for over two weeks and if someone sends him an email today and then another one again next Monday, that person won't receive another response and may not remember that the boss is out of the office (and won't get a response).

I found a way to use a rule to auto respond which included a "Don't reply to Auto Reply emails (negating the infinite loop), but it too appears to have a setting (not adjustable) which prevents multiple responses to the same person - I don't know if that limit is once per day or once per startup.

Also, it is a local rule, so his machine would need to stay on with Outlook running (not a big deal).

The entire corporate world lives with that risk when people go on long vacations, I'd just tell whoever is worried about it to suck it up and pound sand.

I handle our website and I can set up an auto responder through our control panel to send out auto responses. It does one for every email it receives. If you have any backend access to your mail, you might look to that.

Who is hosting your email? Are you using a self-hosted Exchange server or is it a web-based host?

When we had Go Daddy hosting our email, I could easily go the online control panel for Auto Responses and that would respond to every incoming message. Exchange 2003 does not allows that (though I believe that Exchange 2007 does).