I'm on vacation this week but you won't get an autoreply from me, I avoid using them. I can access my Exchange server using my web-enabled cellular phone and Microsoft's Mobile Information Server, so I check for new mail two or three times a day from the phone, replying only to the really important messages.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's coauthor of Word 2002: The Complete Reference (Osborne, 2001) and Beginning Visual Basic 6 Application Development (for Wrox Press). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.