Planning a vacation or getting out of the office for a few days? At these times, you may want to keep track of important emails that may require your immediate attention. The usual way is you add the work or secondary email address to your phone, but that can plague you with hundreds of junk emails. In such cases, you can always use the auto forward function in Outlook mail.
Outlook offers several ways to automatically forward emails to a separate email address. Notification, Error, Caution, etc. to allow the service to filter which emails should or should not be forwarded. You can also set specific keywords such as
In this article, we will talk about the two best ways to auto forward emails in Outlook. Follow the steps below, set up auto forwarding in Outlook and worry only about important emails in your inbox. We will also talk about how to set auto reply in Outlook.
Note: Outlook desktop app features differ between desktop platforms. For this post we will use Outlook Web to work on Mac, Windows, Linux and Chrome OS.
Use Outlook Forwarding
You can forward all emails in your Outlook mail to your primary mail using Outlook’s default forwarding option. Follow the steps below to set it up.
Stage 1: Go to Outlook Web in a desktop browser.
Step 2: Sign in using Microsoft account credentials.
Stage 3: Tap the Settings icon in the upper right corner.
Step 4: Select View all Outlook settings.
Step 5: Step 2 will open the full Outlook Setting window.
Step 6: Go to Mail > Forwarding.
Step 7: Enable the forwarding option and enter the email you want to forward Outlook emails to.
Step 8: Enable or disable the Keep a copy of forwarded messages option and hit the save button at the bottom.
This much. From now on, you will see all Outlook auto forward emails to your alternate email address. But as I mentioned before, the app will forward all mail and it can fill your mail inbox. To avoid such problems, you should use the Outlook Rules function to set specific rules for e-mail forwarding.
Create Outlook Rules
Outlook Rules is one of the best additions in the Outlook service. Using Outlook Rules, you can create powerful and customizable rules to spice up the experience.
Stage 1: Go to Outlook Web in a desktop browser and sign in using Microsoft account credentials.
Step 2: Tap the Settings icon in the upper right corner.
Stage 3: Select View all Outlook settings.
Step 4: Step 2 will open the full Outlook Setting window.
Step 5: Go to Mail > Rules.
Step 6: Select ‘Add new rule’. Add a relevant name to the rule and go to the condition option.
Step 7: You can choose from a range of conditions such as Topic, Keyword, Co-Market, Contacts, and more. For example, I selected ‘Contains subject or body’ and added Important, Urgent, Error in the ‘Search word’ section.
Step 8: You can add as many Conditions as you prefer in the Rule. For example, with ‘Message body contains’ you can add another condition and add related words to search for.
Step 9: After adding the relevant conditions, go to Add action and select Forward > Forward. Select an email address you want emails forwarded to.
You can also add an exception to a rule. Tap on ‘Add exception’ and set a separate condition for it. Hit the Save button in the bottom corner and you’re ready.
From now on, when an email arrives with the relevant subject or body keywords, Outlook will run the rule and act accordingly.
Delete Rules
After your purpose is over, you may need to delete the rule so that Outlook will stop forwarding email in the future. Follow the steps below to delete Outlook rules.
Stage 1: From Outlook web, go to Outlook Settings > Email > Rule.
Step 2: Tap the little delete icon and remove the rule from Outlook.
Set up Automatic Replies
Outlook also allows you to set up automatic replies to let the recipient know that you have received their mail and that you plan to return soon with an appropriate reply. Follow the steps below to set up automatic replies in Outlook.
Stage 1: Open Outlook Web and tap the Settings icon in the upper-right corner.
Step 2: Go to Mail > Automatic Replies.
Stage 3: Turn on automatic replies. Select the time range to run the auto-reply for Outlook mail.
Step 4: You can also enable only send replies to contacts, which ignores emails from other people and only sends automatic replies to contacts.
I like that Outlook offers a rich text editor to customize your auto-reply reply. You can play with bold, italic, underline effects and even use different colors.
Use Outlook Like a Professional
Outlook is a great email service. The add-on works even better with a Microsoft 365 subscription, as it removes all unnecessary ads from the platform. On top of that, it’s packed with useful functions like auto-delete, auto-forward, and more using the Outlook Rules function.
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