Going on Vacation? Handling Your Email

There is no doubt about it, email piles up while you are on vacation. And you sometimes need to leave an email trail to tell others that you are not currently available. Here are some steps to help you with both problems:

Eudora
Before your vacation begins, you might want to set up some of those filters that you have been thinking about (To do so, go to Tools in the Eudora toolbar). When you return, messages that you’ve filtered will go into their filtered space. This is especially useful for listserv messages.

However, other than for filters, Eudora is of little use in your vacation planning! Although it has a feature that lets you set up Auto-Reply, our DLT Email guru, Lance Wilkinson, states that you should NOT use it! Why? Because Eudora doesn’t remember who it sends notifications to. As a result, the Auto-Reply message that you create can go again and again to the same person/group. This is especially dangerous – and rude – with listservs. There is a better way! Read on…

University Libraries WebMail
Documentation is available on the IntraNet to set Vacation Notices on your Libraries WebMail: http://www.libraries.psu.edu:8001/itech/training/vacationnotice.htm

WebMail is “smarter” than Eudora, and sends your Notice only ONCE to the same person or group. Much more polite! So, if you feel that you absolutely must create a Vacation notice, be sure to use WebMail instead of Eudora. However, Lance also suggests,“Be very sure before you create a Vacation Notice … are you absolutely sure you need it?? It often constitutes ‘noise’ to recipients, and should be used very sparingly.”

PreciseMail Anti-Spam Gateway
One last suggestion to help deal with post-vacation emails. In addition to setting filters in Eudora, Anti-Spam Gateway can also help. You can access it from this address: http://psulias.psu.edu/. Log into your account and go to: View Quarantined Messages. From the drop-down menu Show files quarantined on, choose “all” to quickly scan all of your recent spam messages. You can release the few that are not spam. Then, click the left-margin box and delete all the just-viewed messages. Now you can delete all of the Spam notices in Eudora without reviewing them separately.

[THANKS to Darla Baker for this Tip Suggestion!]