The Vacation Responder feature within Gmail allows users to setup an automatic email response if they are unable to respond to their email right away. A few scenarios when Vacation Responders can be helpful are: vacations, illness or injury, sabbatical, conferences, holiday or college breaks, and more.

To activate the Vacation Responder feature and compose an away message:

Navigate to your Beloit College mail.
Login using your Beloit account credentials.
Click on the Settings (Gear) icon located at the top right of the window.
In the pop-up menu, click on See all settings.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the section titled Vacation Responder.
Select the date range for which you would like the responder to be active
Fill in a subject and compose a message.
Below the Compose field, there are two checkboxes (four possible combinations) for recipient options.
- If you do not check any of the boxes, the Vacation Responder message will be sent to everyone who sends you an email.
- To Only send a response to people in my Contacts, check the box beside it.
- To Only send a response to people in Beloit College, check the box beside it.
- If you check both the boxes, the Vacation Responder message will only be sent to users that are both in Beloit College and in your contacts.
When you are ready, click on Save Changes.
The Vacation Responder will now be active during the dates you specified.
- A yellow Vacation Responder bar will appear at the top of your Gmail window with your chosen subject message while the responder is active.

Note: The Vacation Responder message that you have composed will be saved in the Settings > Vacation Responder for future reuse. To reuse the message, simply make any necessary edits, and then adjust the display date range and click the Save Changes button.

Vacation Responder Setting

Vacation Responder Active Bar