Computer and Web Articles

A couple of months ago I had a client who desired a site involving some very complicated, very in-depth programming. I knew that in order to complete the client’s project on time and within budget, I’d need to utilize the talents of my amazingly talented web-programming buddy in New York.

So I sent my programmer buddy an e-mail asking him to contact me immediately about this new project, expecting to hear back from him within 24 hours, as I always do. (He lives at his computer, just like me.)

Twenty-four hours went by. Then 48. And then, all of a sudden, a week had gone by and my programming buddy had not responded to a single one of my e-mails. I restructured my client’s project accordingly, but wondered what had happened to my buddy.

Well, it turns out he was in London on a two-week vacation. That’s great and all, but it would have been even better if I could have been notified. He needed an answering machine for his email saying, “Hi. I’m out of the office until the end of April. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you upon my return.”

But that’s not possible, you’re snickering. An answering machine for his e-mail program! Ha! Preposterous!

Actually … it’s not preposterous. It’s just called an e-mail autoresponder. Not only does setting one up let the people e-mailing you know that you can’t get back to them immediately, it’s as easy as cake. Let’s follow a brief overview of how it’s done, shall we?

You can set up autoresponders in just about any e-mail program, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on Microsoft Outlook Express.

After you’ve rolled up your sleeves, taken a seat before your computer and opened up Outlook Express, you need to create your response message. Many people like to do this by using Notepad, saving the text file to their hard drive, and linking to it from Outlook Express.

An example autoresponse might sound like, “Hi there! Thanks for e-mailing me. I will be on vacation and out of the office until July 29. I won’t be checking my e-mail while I’m away, but will respond to your e-mail upon my return. Have a great day!”

Next, you need to create an e-mail rule in Outlook Express. You do this by going to the Tools menu, clicking on Message Rules, and then clicking on Mail. This is where you can make sure that your rule is applied to “All Messages” and that your autoresponder will be delivered to all e-mails received while you’re away.

Once you’ve set up your first autoresponder, it’s easy to do over and over. The limitations of autoresponders, however, include having to leave your computer on, your e-mail program running and your connection to the Internet enabled while you’re away. Unfortunately these aren’t realistic expectations for people using dial-up connections.

If having your very own autoresponder sounds appealing to you, I highly recommend you visit http://tinyurl.com/rgu0; the tutorial offered on this page will walk you through the process of setting up your own autoresponder in Outlook Express in a simple, easy-to-understand, step-by-step fashion.