Create an away or holiday responder in Mail on the Apple Mac

Sometimes you don't want to be disturbed by emails, such as on a trip or holiday, but constant emails can spoil it. Create an auto-responder in the Mail app to send automated replies.

We are never really out of touch these days and the phone in your pocket will constantly demand your attention. However, sometimes you don't want to be hassled by emails, such as when you are on a day off or on holiday. When you are lying on a beach somewhere, you don't want work emails on your phone, so turn off notifications.

It is useful to set up and automated email response to tell people you will get back to them when you return from your trip or holiday. That way they know you received the email and will get back to them.

It is quite easy to set up the Mail app on the Mac to automatically reply to incoming emails with a pre-written response and you just have to create a rule.

Rules are applied to incoming emails and there is a trigger and an action. With every new email that lands in the inbox, the rule is applied and if it contains the trigger, the action is taken. Let's see how it works.

This method is used to create a holiday response, but a rule like this could be used to automatically reply to any type of message, such as a sales enquiry.

1 Mail preferences

Open the Mail app, go to the Mail menu and click Preferences.

2 Add an email rule

Select the Rules tab at the end of the toolbar to display the rules that have been created. We need a new one so click the Add Rule button.

3 Define the email rule

There is a trigger and an action and we need to set both.

1. Select To in this menu. This means the rule will look at the To field in incoming emails.
2. Select Contains here. We want to check if the To field contains a certain value.
3. Enter your email address. Any email addressed to you will trigger the action.
4. We want to send an automated email reply, so set this to Reply to Message.
5. Reply message text appears. Click the button.

The To (1) menu contains many options and if you don't want to reply to every email you get, including spammers, you could set the trigger to reply to only those people in your contacts.

There are other options, such as only to reply to VIPs.

4 Create an email response

Click the Reply message text button and then enter the text for the email you want to send.

5 Enable the auto-responder

You only want the rule to be enabled when you are going away. Tick the box next to the rule just before you set off and clear the box to top the automated replies when you return.

6 Set power options

The Mail app will only respond to emails when it is running, so you must leave your Mac powered up while you are away. Don't worry, many people never switch off and leave their Macs running 24/7 anyway and have no problems.

Open System Preferences and click Energy Saver. Make sure the computer never sleeps, but set a short timeout on the screen. There is no need for the screen to be on and without it, the Mac will use minimal power.

7 Lock the Mac

You must leave the Mac running, but you don't want it unlocked so any passer-by can access it. Go to the user menu and select Login Window. This locks the Mac and no-one can use it, but the Mail app continues to run in the background responding to emails.

8 Scheduled wake and sleep

It is possible to configure the Mac to automatically turn on once a day while you are away on a holiday or trip to respond to emails. The rest of the time it can be in sleep mode. Click the Schedule button in Energy Saver and set the Mac to wake at a certain time each day and then to go back to sleep after a short time.

Give it enough time to respond to emails and then there is no need to keep the Mac on.