As a part time pro-blogger it can feel like you are always connected to your work. Over the last year though I have taken periods from one to two weeks where I go completely off line. It is the best thing, but I couldn’t do it without a Gmail Auto Reply set up on my gmail account though!
Like many bloggers, I receive lots of emails from readers, PR firms and other bloggers on top of my personal emails and newsletters that I have subscribed to. To leave these unanswered for my time offline is not the professional message that I want to send. So when I take time off line I set up the following message in my Gmail Auto Reply:
Hello,
Thanks for your email. I am currently on holidays. Over this time, I will not be accessing my emails. I love working online, but it is also lovely to take a break and disconnect and spend time solely with my family.
To make taking this break manageable, if you wish for me to respond to your email please resend it after Monday 18th April and I will respond as soon as I can after that date. Thank you very much for understanding!
Kind regards,
Nicole
How To Set Up Your Gmail Auto Reply
Click the icon in the far right hand corner of your gmail account as highlighted by the green arrow. It will then give you a drop down menu. Select “Mail settings”.
Once in Mail settings, scroll to the bottom of the page until you find “Out of Office AutoReply:”. Click the radio button for the option Out of Office AutoReply On.
You then enter the subject of the Auto Reply, in the section highlighted by the yellow arrow. I simply call mine “On Holidays” but you can call it anything you like! Then select the time period that you will be away from your email account for. Then enter the message you would like people to receive when they email you.
For the auto reply to be activated you must click “Save changes” as highlighted by the green arrow.
Return to your gmail inbox and you will see that it is working by the message at the top of your screen highlighted by the green arrow. This screen shot tells me that my “On Holidays” auto reply is now working on my gmail account.
I have multiple email addresses coming into my gmail account, but I only have to set up this one response in Gmail and it will send the auto reply to all my email addresses. If someone sends me emails each day, this automated reply will be sent at most once every 4 days.
