Outlook out of office is a nice feature, being able to inform people when you’re not around.

To setup with a generic rule Launch outlook > Tools Menu > Out of Office Assistant
Select you location, IN or OUT of the office
Select Add Rule…
Ignore everything until you get to
Perform these actions:
Now select Reply with & Template..
You’ll now be presented with a new Untitled email message
Fill in the subject with the message title of your choice

Example.. John Smith is away

Fill in the body of the message with the specifics

Example.. I am currently our of the office until the 14th of November, in my absence please contact Jayne Doe

Once finished, go to the File Menu > Save As…
Save as type: Outlook Template (*.oft) > Save

Close the template, “you’ll be asked to save again, say NO as it’s trying to save it as an email draft”

Now you’re back at the Edit Rule screen, click ok

You’ll now be prompted with the message “This rule will fire for all incoming messages. Is this what you want?”

Select yes

Select ok to close the next dialogue box and your out of office is now setup

To turn office assistant off Tools Menu > Out of Office Assistant

Errors
If you cannot access out of office ? This happens when Out of office is enabled, but Outlook either crashes or is not exited properly.

We then get prompted with the following error – this command is not available look at documentation, cannot access out of office

To resolve this  

Open Outlook >Help Menu > About Microsoft Office Outlook > Disabled Items

Look for Outlook Addin outex.dll , select this and then click enable, now try Out of office assistant again.

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