How to Set Up an Out-of-Office Reply in AOL Mail

AOL calls its out-of-office reply a vacation response. It answers incoming email automatically while you’re away, so people know why you’re quiet and when you’ll be back.

Turn on a vacation response

1. Click the Settings icon and select More settings.
2. Click Vacation response.
3. Turn on Enable vacation response.
4. Select the dates you want it active.
5. Type your response message.
6. Click Save.

A different reply for certain domains

AOL lets you add a second message for mail from specific domains — for example, one reply for people writing from aol.com and another for yahoo.com, or a more formal one for a client’s company domain.

1. On the same Vacation response page, turn on Add another response.
2. Enter up to 2 domains (like aol.com or yahoo.com).
3. Type the different message.
4. Click Save.

Turn it off

Go back to Settings › More settings › Vacation response, turn off Enable vacation response and click Save. Setting an end date when you switch it on means you don’t have to remember.

What to write

• When you’re back: the date you’ll reply from.
• Who to contact instead for anything urgent.
• Keep it short, and leave out details like where you’ve gone — the reply goes to anyone who emails you, including strangers.

Example: “Thanks for your email. I’m away until Monday 10 November and will reply then. For anything urgent, please contact Sam at sam@example.com.”

Replies and spam

An automatic reply answers whoever writes to you, including senders whose mail lands in Spam. That’s one more reason to keep personal details out of it, and to mark junk as spam so AOL’s filter keeps learning.

Read AOL in another app?

The vacation response is part of AOL Mail’s own settings, so switch it on from AOL Mail on the web — even if you normally read your AOL email in Outlook, Apple Mail or a phone app. Then send yourself a test from a different account to check the reply arrives.

Setting this up elsewhere?

The same feature in other services: Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo Mail. Back to AOL Mail login.