OOF not work！！！

Question

Im in a small campany which has several persons. My boss will take a long leave, so he forwarded his email to me, he asked IT role person to set the auto-forwarding..My boss and I do not have many skills at this. He also set up oof before leaving to our clients. But the clients did not receive the oof email! Please help. If can resolve it without calling my boss or ask for his password or something, it would be perfect. Thanks! bty, our account are paid one, not free ones.

Answer 1

Dear Jack,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you.

Based on your description, your boss has his mailbox forwarding the emails to you and he also set up OOF for his mailbox. Now the OOF does not work.

For this issue, please note that by design, a mailbox cannot have forwarding rules and an Out of Office notification active at the same time. Since you mentioned the IT set up forwarding for the boss, this rule would cause the OOF not working. For more information, please refer to: Senders do not receive Out of Office notifications - Exchange | Microsoft Learn.

In this situation, if you want to resolve this issue without involving your boss, you may try the steps below:

1. Ask the IT person in your company to remove the forwarding rule from your boss' mailbox.
2. Let IT person to assign read permission of your boss' mailbox to you. Then you can read your boss' emails without asking him the password. For how to add the permission, refer to: Give mailbox permissions to another user - Admin Help - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn.

Read email in another user's mailbox

1. In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.
2. Select the name of the user (whose mailbox you want to allow to be read) to open their properties pane.
3. On the Mail tab, select Manage mailbox permissions.
4. Next to Read and manage, select Edit.
5. Select Add permissions, then choose the name of the user or users that you want to allow to read email from this mailbox.
6. Select Add.

Note

Read and Manage permissions are called Full Access permission when granted in the Exchange admin center. This permission allows the assigned user mailbox to read as well as manage emails in the user mailbox on which the permission is assigned. Full Access permission does not grant Send as or Send on behalf permissions.

If there is any update or I misunderstand you, please feel free to let me know. I will continue to assist you. Your understanding and co-operation are highly appreciated.

Thanks for your precious time. Have a nice day！

Sincerely,

Sherry | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

>>>

so he forwarded his email to me, he asked IT role person to set the auto-forwarding.

<<<

May I know whether IT person set up Inbox rule or transport tule?

To set up email forwarding rules and an Out of Office notification at the same time, you have to set up Inbox rules for the mailbox instead of setting up a transport rule. For detailed information see under Workaround : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/exchange/troubleshoot/send-emails/senders-not-receiving-out-of-office-notifications