Out of Office Assistant (2000)

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I want to use the “Out of Office Assistant” for the first time and the help menu tells me to go to the Tools menu and choose OOA. The problem is that nothing like that shows up and I don’t see anywhere that it’s an Add In.
Any suggestions or solutions?

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I verified that it is also missing on my system (stand-alone).
Help Indicates that it is an ‘Exchange Feature’ and is an add-in only for that environment.
Oh well – presumably the Outlook designers decided that no one would leave their computer on and connected to the internet while they were away.

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Your IT-department probably disabled it…

I remember that the setup in Outlook 97 was either for a LAN or the Internet, which also affected this option. I don’t know if that was still the case in Outlook 2000, though.

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Just in case – the Out-of-Ofiice Assistant Menu only shows when you have selected a message Folder, it does not show if the active folder is a Calendar, Notes, Task or Journal Folder. As others have noted, it’s an Exchange-only feature in 2000, but I think it’s available to DUN users in XP/2002 … maybe …

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If you have a 24/7 connection and wish to keep your computer on while you are away then you can use the “Rules Wizard” to send a reply to all incoming messages using a specific template. I haven’t tried it but it does look as if you can get it to send a specific reply.

Incidentally, even if you are on an Exchange Server network you still need to keep the Outlook Machine turned on and attached to the Lan for the Out of Office Assistant to work. Before one holiday I set up the Out of Office Assistant to tell people there was nobody there, and then switched off my machine. Result no Out of office messages sent, and an annoyed secretary who had to send the message manually after a few days.

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