- What you may know as "vacation auto-reply" or "out-of-office notification", AOL Mail calls "Mail Away Message". From your inbox, click on "Options" (top right), and select "Settings".
- "General" should automatically be selected on the left (if not, click on it).
- About midway through that screen, you'll find this setting, with "No mail away message" showing by default (meaning that no automatic reply is currently setup for your account).
- Click on the Mail Away menu, and AOL offers two quick, already written messages:
- Select "I am unavailable", and AOL Mail will automatically send the following email to your senders: "Hello, I am unavailable to read your message at this time" for temporary cases - ideal if you are about to start a meeting or a lengthy conference call, for example.
- Select "I am away until..." instead, and the auto-reply will be "Hello, I am away until and am unable to read your message" - then, click in the date field to pick a return day from the popup calendar.
- Finally, select "Custom" from the dropdown menu to enter your own out-of-office notification: it can't be longer than 256 characters, and cannot contain HTML tags. AOL Mail doesn't currently count characters count as you type (and will let you go over without notice), use the text box below to count characters as you type: then, copy from here and paste inside the AOL text box.
Tip: try to stay under 250 characters to account for possible difference in counting by AOL.
0 characters - Once you have chosen and/or typed an alert type, scroll down to the very bottom of that screen and click "Save Settings": your Mail Away Message is now activated!
Tip: to turn off your automatic reply, follow the steps above, but this time select "No mail away message" from the dropdown before clicking "Save Settings" at the bottom.
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