How to Set Up an Auto Response with Thunderbird

Setting up an auto response can be very useful if you are planning on going on vacation for a certain period of time and don't have your email linked up with your phone. Mozilla Thunderbird makes it very simple to create an auto response message.

Follow these steps to create an auto response that will automatically be sent to anyone who emails you:

First, open up Thunderbird and click on the 'Write' button which is located at the top of the Mozilla Thunderbird window.

Next, fill in the subject line to something relevant like "Out of Office: Vacation" and place your message in the body of the email.

Once you have finished the previous step, you want to go up to File > Save as > Template. Doing this will save this "Out of Office" email as a template which will allow you to use it for an auto response. You can now close the mail window.

In the main Mozilla Thunderbird window, go up to Tools > Message Filters. When the message filters window pops up select 'new' and title it accordingly. Choose the option marked 'match all messages.' At the bottom portion of this window under 'Perform These Actions' you will see it says 'Move messages to.' You want to change this to say 'Reply with Template' which is pretty self explanatory. In the box to the right, choose the template you have saved from the previous step.

Double check to make sure this filter is on (checked) and you should now have an auto response set up correctly. To test this, you can email yourself from a DIFFERENT account and check to see you receive the auto response. Do not email yourself from the email you're using in Thunderbird, as this will create a perpetual loop of auto response messages that will go on until you turn off your message filters.

There are several add-ons available for Thunderbird that will allow you to set up a "delayed response" message. Something like this will let you receive an email and respond to it at a later time, automatically.