Misc. question about emails

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Dimensionless
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:04 pm

Misc. question about emails

Post by Dimensionless » Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:56 am

If I email someone and I receive an auto-reply like "I'm out of the office until such and such date", does that person still receive my email when they return? Or do I have to email them again when they come back?

TakeruK
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Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: Misc. question about emails

Post by TakeruK » Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:33 pm

Yes, usually that message means that the email was delivered, and their email server is set up to automatically send you the "out of office" reply. It's possible that they are still somewhat regularly checking their email but they just want to let people know that they aren't going to be able to respond right away.

As for resending the email, it depends on the reason for your original email. If it's something really important and you know it's an email that they are expecting from you (e.g. your advisor asked you to send you a draft of an abstract soon, etc.) then I would resend the email soon after they get back. This way it will pop up at the top of their inbox and they don't have to dig through their long list of ignored emails to get to something that is important. This is even more true if the "return date" is a long time away (like weeks from now).

If it's something that is not as urgent to both of you, then maybe wait awhile longer but if you don't hear back, resending the email is probably a good idea. You can just write that you sent the original email awhile ago and got an out-of-office auto-reply and that you're resending the message in case it got lost or something.

Dimensionless
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:04 pm

Re: Misc. question about emails

Post by Dimensionless » Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:18 am

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Let me elaborate the "urgency" of my situation a bit. So I pretty much just interviewed for a PhD position (offered in Europe) on the phone (about two weeks ago) and one of the questions was if I had any upcoming publications, to which I answered something like "yes, we hope to get one coming up soon" sort of thing; a tentative, but confident answer.

So, I just found out in my research group that we will be presenting at a conference in April and get a paper published in a high-impact journal (with my name as author on both). Call me a little paranoid, but I contacted my interviewer just to let him know about this update in the hope that it would assist them with the evaluation process. I think its a pretty significant development that they should know about.

I believe I will hear a definite answer by next week, but my recruiter was out of the office until this weekend (hence, the automated email reply) and I want to know if I should email him again the day he gets back to the office.

I know it is a bit over-analytical, but I don't want to leave anything up to chance.

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Tom Joad
Posts: 120
Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2012 9:35 pm

Re: Misc. question about emails

Post by Tom Joad » Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:38 am

If you're that worried about it, you can just resend and say in the first line something like: "I apologize if you already received this email, but I wanted to make sure it got through since I got an automated reply when I sent it earlier this week."



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