In this section I will start by showing you how you can create a very basic autoresponder. It will reply to emails sent to you with a message saying something along the lines of “I am away”.
Autoresponder that Says “I am away”
Let’s create your first autoresponder. It will be very simple: anyone who sends an email to your email address will get back a reply with some text in it.
To create the autoresponder click the “New” toolbar button (if you are not able to find the button please read the Using the Main Window chapter). On the window that shows up, select the “Simple Autoresponder” icon and click the “New” button. This opens the “Autoresponder Properties” window.
Type in Out of Office into the “Name” text box and click the “Response Message” tab. Click the “Message” button to open the message editor window. Type in your email address (e.g. myaddress@mydomain.com) or whatever email address you want this autoresponder to use into the “From” text box. Then enter Re: $(Original-Subject) into the “Subject” text box, and type in anything as the text of the email, for example:
After you do this, click the “Save & Close” button to save your changes. This will close the message editor.
To find out how to take advantage of the message editor’s all features please read the Composing an Email Message chapter.
Now we will configure the autoresponder to download messages from your POP3 account and tell it which SMTP server it should use to send emails. Click the “Mail Settings” tab, click "Incoming Mail Accounts" and click "Add" to set up a new account:
Type in the account's email address into the "Email address" text box and the server address into the "Server name" text box. Enter POP3 account user name and password into the other two text boxes (“User name” and “Password”).
Mark the “Leave copies of messages on the server” check box. With this option turned on, the autoresponder will not remove emails it downloads from your email account and you will be able to download and read them using your email client. Make sure the check box labeled “Do not leave a copy of a message that triggered an action” in not marked.
You can test the settings by clicking the "Test Account Settings". Correct any errors before proceeding any further.
Now that we have configured the POP3 account, let’s set up the SMTP server. Click "OK" to go back to the "Mail Settings" window and click the "Outgoing Mail" tab:
Click "Add" to enter a new server:
Type in the name of the SMTP server you want the autoresponder to use to send replies into the “SMTP server name” text box.
Note: If your SMTP server requires authorization please note that you can configure it using the same window (“My outgoing mail server requires me to log in” and “Authenticate by connecting to POP3 server” check boxes). For more information about autoresponder’s POP3 and SMTP configuration, please read the Downloading and Sending Mail chapter.
You can test the server using the "Test Server Settings".
Click the “OK” button to confirm and click "OK" again to go back to the “Autoresponder Properties” window. The program will automatically pre-select the newly added account and server:
Click "OK" to finish the set up. Congratulations! Your autoresponder is fully configured!
Hint: The autoresponder will reply to the email address in the From line of incoming messages. To change that, click the "Mail Settings" tab and turn on the option labeled "Default sender email address is in Reply-To: header" to tell the program to take the email address from Reply-To line (and only if it's not present -- from From line). Most of the time, it doesn't matter but some people may want the replies to go to a different email address than the one they are sending from. Turning on the option will turn on support for this.
Testing the New Autoresponder
We are now going to see how the autoresponder works but before we do that make sure the autoresponder connects to the POP3 server as often as possible so we do not have to wait too long for a reply (read Telling How Often Download and Send Mail).
To test the autoresponder, open your email client, create a new message, and type in: This is a test into its subject. Send it to the autoresponder’s email address.
Wait a minute or two for the message to reach the mailbox and download new mail using the program. If you configured the autoresponder correctly, the reply to your email (Re: This is a test) should be right in your inbox.
To see a report of your autoresponder’s activity please use the "Incoming Mail” tab on the main program window. Read this section: Monitoring Program Activity to find out more.
Disabling the Autoresponder
Sometimes, you may want to temporarily disable an autoresponder. This is useful if you do not want it to process incoming mail for a while. For example, you may disable your “I’m away” autoresponder while you are ... well ... not away.
Double-click the autoresponder’s icon and clear the check box labeled “Enable this autoresponder while processing mail”.
To turn the autoresponder back on, mark the check box.