Hotmail autoreply to emails - vacation message

Want to inform senders of your unavailability? You can set an autoreply from Hotmail account that is forwarded to senders the moment you get an incoming email from them. The process is fairly easy and is accomplished through the Hotmail Settings or Options.

Automated vacation replies from Hotmail section

Click on the "Options" link (just below the sign out link) and select "More Options" from the drop down. This takes you to the full Hotmail Options and settings section. You'll find the "Send automated vacation replies" link under the Manage your account heading - click on it.

Composing an autoreply in Hotmail

You now come to a Vacation Reply settings window. To activate the feature, click on the radio button in front of "Send vacation replies to people who e-mail me" then enter the message you want to be sent in the big box below. Lastly, you can choose to have the autoreply sent to all incoming emails or only to the mails you get from your contacts. You are not advised to opt for the former option as it will attract junk emails. Anyway, when done, remember to click the "Save" button to preserve the changes you've made.

A couple of points: Autoreplies are not sent for incoming junk emails (messages that are made to skip the inbox by Hotmail's automated junk filter), and rightly so. Secondly, people who keep sending you emails (even though they know you are away) will get the autoreply message you've setup once even 4 days.

If you go back to the "Inbox", a message at the top informs you that the vacation autoreply is still on. To stop the autoreplies, you need to go back to Hotmail Options and switch off the feature.

Tip: Just like email signatures, Hotmail honours HTML code in the autoreply. Thus, you can use <br> tag to create breaks and start text from a new line, include an image (hosted on a web server - image hosting sites?), fancy styling etc.