3. How to Send an Automatic Vacation Response

Summer—and vacations—are right around the corner. If you'll be unplugged and out of reach, alert your contacts you're offline by setting an automatic vacation response.

The vacation response feature will automatically send a reply with a message to anyone who emails you, except for messages classified as spam and messages addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to. These groups will not receive a notification. If a person contacts you again after four days, Gmail will send another vacation response to remind the person youre away.

To set up a vacation response, click the gear icon in the upper right of your Gmail and select "Settings." From the "General" tab, select "Vacation Responder on" in the "Vacation responder" section. Next, enter the subject and body of your message in the appropriate fields, then check the box next to "Only send a response to people in my Contacts" if you don't want everyone who emails you to know you're away.

If you use Google Apps, you'll also see an option to send a response only to people from your domain. If you check both of these boxes, only people who are in your contacts and your domain will receive the automatic response. When you're done, click "Save Changes."