Outlook: Create auto reply using the "Reply-to" email address

Question

I currently receive emails from my wordpress form. The emails come from my email address. Included in the email is a reply-to email address and I want to setup an auto reply that will use that address. I tried to set it up in outlook but there's no where to select the address. I'm able to do everything else but it just emails me instead.

Basically I want to receive email from web form. Checks the subject line for specific text. Get the reply-to address and send confirmation email saying we received the information.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Answer 1

Probably not. The standard way that automated replies are handled is specified in :

RFC 3834: Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3834

"In general, automatic responses SHOULD be sent to the Return-Path field if generated after delivery. If the response is generated prior to delivery, the response SHOULD be sent to the reverse-path from the SMTP MAIL FROM command, or (in a non-SMTP system) to the envelope return address which serves as the destination for non- delivery reports."

"A Service Responder MAY deliver the response to the address(es) from the >From field, or to another address from the request payload, provided this behavior is precisely defined in the specification for that service. Services responders SHOULD NOT use the Reply-To field for this purpose."

Which is basically there to ensure that for instance, where someone sends an email but sets the reply-to address to be a distribution list (not uncommon), that automated emails only end up with the sender, not distributed far and wide to a group.

You might be able to work around it by setting the form to use the From: field to show the intended recipient's address (so it will show as coming from them, but the SMTP Mail From will still show you), so Outlook would then be able to reply to them that way.

However, unless you've got protections in place such that you know the sender's address is definitely genuine I'd advise against automated replies. Receiving spam yourself from a form can be bad enough, but if the spammer uses a 3rd party's email address in the form (which is commonly what they'll do), your auto replies will essentially become spam emails to that 3rd party email, and you risk them flagged them as spam and you getting blacklisted.

Answer 2

This is not a built-in feature in Outlook, but you can achieve it by using a custom rule and a script. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Create a new email message and type the confirmation message that you want to send to the web form sender. Save it as an Outlook template (.oft) file in a folder of your choice.
2. Press Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor in Outlook. In the Project Explorer, expand Microsoft Outlook Objects and double-click ThisOutlookSession.
3. Copy and paste the following code into the code window:

Public Sub AutoReply(Item As Outlook.MailItem) Dim oRespond As Outlook.MailItem Set oRespond = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate("C:\Path\To\Your\Template.oft") oRespond.To = Item.ReplyRecipientNames oRespond.Send End Sub

4. Modify the path to your template file in the code. Save and close the Visual Basic Editor.

5. Go to File > Manage Rules & Alerts and create a new rule. Select Apply rule on messages I receive and click Next.

6. Select the condition with specific words in the subject and click on specific words in the Step 2 box. Enter the text that you want to check in the subject line of the web form email and click Add. Click OK and Next.

7. Select the action run a script and click on a script in the Step 2 box. Select AutoReply from the list of scripts and click OK. Click Next and Finish.

8. Make sure your rule is enabled and click OK.

Now, whenever you receive an email from your web form with the specific text in the subject line, Outlook will automatically send a confirmation email to the reply-to address using your template.