It’s officially summer and the Fourth of July is nigh. It’s time to turn on your away message and get lost. But before you do, make sure you are covered. Here are some tips to keep your e-mail house in order while you enjoy the season:

For Outlook

2007’s Improved Out of Office Assistant

The Out of Office Assistant has changed significantly in Outlook 2007. If you click on the tools menu and select Out of Office Assistant, you will see a dialog box that is somewhat different from previous versions. Now, when you select the option to “Send Out of Office Replies,” you can click the check box that says “Only send during this time range.” Checking this box activates boxes to set the start and end dates and specify times during which you need replies sent. Kind of handy.

Four ways to keep on top of your e-mail while you’re on vacation.

Another change to this feature is two tabs, one for handling replies to be sent “Inside My Organization” and the other for handling replies to be sent “Outside My Organization.” In earlier versions of Outlook, replies were not sent to external contacts at all.

In order to enable the “Outside My Organization” reply, click on the tab and enable “auto-reply to people outside my organization” by placing a check in the box. Once you enable this option, you can select a radio button indicating whether the reply should be sent to “my contacts only” or “anyone outside my organization.” Handy, indeed. (Melissa Adams)

Autoreply with Custom Subject Line
Sometimes you need to mix it up and modify the autoreply subject. Follow these steps:

1. In the Out of Office Assistant dialog, click the Add Rule button.
2. For the reply to go to “all messages that arrive,” leave all the criteria fields blank.
3. Check the “Reply with” box and click Template.
4. Specify the subject AND the body of the message in the email form that opens. Leave the other fields blank, save and close the form.

Note: Be sure to remove the text from the “Autoreply only once…” box where you would normally specify your Out of Office message. If you don’t, senders will get both the custom subject response and the standard response. (Brian Choplick)

For the BlackBerry

Filter Incoming Mail
Say, for example, you receive a daily report that you will not read or deal with on your phone and would prefer to just handle it back at the office. Can you create a filter for that?
Of course you can. Here’s how:

1. Click on the Messages icon to open your messages, then click the trackwheel or Menu button and select Options.
2. Select Email Filters.
3. Click your trackwheel or Menu button, select New and then type a filter name.
4. You have several fields you can filter on: From; Sent To; Subject; Message; Sent directly to me; CC to me; BCC to me; Importance; Sensitivity. You can choose more than one option here. For example, to take care of your daily report problem, create the following filter:From: coworker@domain.com
   Subject: Daily Report
   Action: Do not forward

   This will affect any emails from colleagues with “daily report” in the subject.

5. Click your trackwheel or Menu button and save the filter. By default, it is enabled and will function immediately with any new incoming messages.

If you want to temporarily allow filtered messages, simply click on the filter name to uncheck in the filter list. Take note, however, that filtering works only if your BlackBerry is activated on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server; to access filters with BlackBerry Internet Service you must check with your wireless carrier.

High-Priority E-Mail Notifications
You want to make sure you know when high-priority e-mails come in, and the standard notification doesn’t quite command your attention. To set up special notices, start at the home screen, go to Profiles, then Advanced. Here you can create a new profile or modify your current one. Set the desired notification for Level 1 Messages and save. Note: High-priority message notices will work even if you have disabled those for other types of messages. (Nkoli Ukpabi)

Have any tips for handling e-mail while you’re away? Send them my way: jen.darr@pchelps.com.

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