Whether you’re wrapping up work for the holidays or taking a well-deserved vacation (or both), it’s common to wonder what to do with your emails while you’re away from your desk—and how to avoid being greeted with a depressing avalanche of messages that need responding to when you return to work.
We have a few tips and techniques to share, and we’ll show you how to use them in Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook on the web (if you use another client, similar features to the ones we’re discussing should be available). Invest some time in pausing your inbox before your break, and you will be grateful in the future.
Get specific in your out-of-office
Most of us are familiar with the out-of-office message, but it is not always used in the most effective manner.
Don’t just send a quick note to let people know you’re unavailable—be specific about when you’ll be back and what your correspondents can expect from you in terms of email when you return to your computer.
Explaining how long you’ll be gone for and what kind of email access you’ll have during that time helps to set expectations and should result in fewer follow-up emails when you return. People can tailor their emailing to you if they know you won’t be back until a certain date.
If your line of work allows it, it might be worth declaring email bankruptcy in your out-of-office email as well: Nothing sent during your absence will be read, according to the statement.
It means you can start over when you return, and anyone who took the time to read your out-of-office message will know they need to contact you then.
You can set an out-of-office message in Gmail on the web by clicking the cog icon (top right), then See all settings, General, and Out-of-Office Auto Reply. Log into the iCloud portal on the web, then click the gear icon (top left), then Preferences, and then Auto-Reply.
Click the cog icon (top right) in Outlook on the web, then select View all Outlook settings, Email, and Automatic replies.
Create rules and filters
You may already use email rules and filters to manage your inbox while you’re at work, but they can also be extremely useful when you’re not.
You can reduce the number of unread messages waiting for you when your break is over by marking incoming emails as read and archiving them where appropriate. How you go about this will depend on your job, how you use email, and a variety of other factors.
You could, for example, ensure that all internal emails from within your company are marked as read and archived while you’re away—or you could apply a filter to newsletters that are worth reading when you’re in the office but can be skipped when you’re not.
Consider the types of messages that you won’t need to catch up on—or that you absolutely don’t want to miss (in which case you can star them rather than marking them as read and archiving them).
In summary, you’re instructing your email client to manage messages on your behalf, which should help you get back into the email groove when you return.
To begin configuring filters in Gmail on the web, click the cog icon (top right), then Filters and blocked addresses, and Create a new filter.
On macOS, go to Mail, Settings, Rules, and Add Rule. In Outlook on the web, click the cog icon (top right), then select View all Outlook settings, Email, and Rules.
You can also take the following steps:
The more organized your inbox is before you leave, the more organized it will be when you return.
If you’re brave enough, you can mark everything that’s arrived as read and archive it before you leave—then you’ll only have to deal with what’s arrived during your absence, having drawn a line underneath anything older than that.
Another option is to delegate your inbox management to a colleague before you leave, even if it’s just quickly checking messages and marking the most important ones.
In your out-of-office response, you might mention a contact or two who can assist correspondents while you’re away, implying that many jobs will be completed by the time you return.
You may discover that specific email clients have tools to assist you.
For example, in Gmail on the web, you can drag messages between tabs and tell Gmail to remember your selection: this means that a large number of incoming messages will be automatically sorted on your behalf, and your Primary tab should be less cluttered than it would otherwise be.
Enlisting the assistance of a third-party tool may also be beneficial to you, making it easier to take a break from your inbox.
Boomerang for Gmail and Outlook, for example, allows you to pause the arrival of emails for a set period of time, whereas SaneBox uses finely tuned AI algorithms to determine which of your incoming emails are actually important and worth responding to.
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