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How to set Outlook out-of-office automatically using PowerAutomate.

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Outlook OOO with PowerAutomate Flow

As a consultant, I use many email address and work for a client on different days/hours that are predefined in advance. Each time I am “away” from that Office 365 environment, MS Teams (or still Skype for Business for some) will notify users that I am “away” automatically but what about emails sent to my inbox?

I also need to tell people emailing me that they should not expect a response that day.

We all know how to enable the Out of Office Notification in Outlook, this has not changed much from earlier version of Outlook.

Exchange_2013_Out_Of_Office_OOF_OOO_Outlook2013-EN4

When I do the same action 3 times in a week, I need to change it so that it starts being more intelligent and automated.
Thanks to PowerAutomate (Flow) we can do that very simply.

Pre-requirements

My Outlook calendar is well organised and events when I am “not working” on that environment, are clearly showing as “Francois away” or “Francois out”.

That’s the only pre-requirements I need: a keyword that will be found in a calendar event.

Build the Flow

I created a new Flow that I called “Start out of office if event starts and contains OUT or AWAY”, which will trigger just before an event is about to start. In that case, I usually have my “away event” at 8am or set for the whole day (00:00).

I need to make sure that the Event Subject contains either AWAY or OUT keyword.

And finally, if this is the case we now enable the OOO (Out of Office notification)

Note that there is no step to disabling the OOO since it is done while we enable it (End Time). There is no action required in the”If no” case either since the Flow will just go to the end and stop.

That’s all

Test is by creating an event in just 5 minutes and now stop worrying if you left an OOO message or not.