Using Microsoft Outlook to Forward Emails to Your Home Email Address

The Out of Office Assistant

Anyone who has ever had to work at home or had a long break away from work knows that the emails just pile up and can make for a very busy day back to the office. Well if you know in advance you are going to be gone or you have access to set this option up you can get your work emails at home and just work from there. It’s a pretty simple trick and doesn’t take much time at all.

First you must open Microsoft Outlook. Once you have done this then go to the Tools option at the top of the window. In here you will be looking for something called Out of Office Assistant, which you will need to click on. This will open a new window with a couple of white text boxes and a couple of radio buttons. You can set it up to reply to anyone who emails you, with an automated response, or you can take it a step further and forward the mail to yourself, that is what we are going to do so at the bottom left click on the button labeled Add Rule.

Yet another window will open this one with several options that we can choose from. You can select what ever options that suit your needs here, if you only wanted emails from Jim Smith then you could do that, but we are going to set it up to forward all emails to us. So here is what you will want to check, there are two check boxes labeled “Sent Directly to me” and “Copied (CC) to me”, we want a check in both of these areas. Click ok in the top right corner and it will take you back to the previous screen but now your rule is displayed.

Now to use this option you have to turn it on by highlighting the radio button (the little white circle) that is labeled “I am currently out of the office”. This enables the rule and will now forward all emails you receive at your work email address to your home email address. Test it out by sending your self an email, if it works then good luck working from home and if it doesn’t go back and check the steps.

Fairly simple steps with very big results that can help anyone out from time to time.