Missing out-of-office replies

An out-of-office reply may take a different route from a normal reply. This means you may receive normal replies to emails you send from a matter, but not every automatic reply.

Where replies go

Emails you send from a matter have two addresses for different purposes:

• Reply-To: the sender’s email address at your firm. Normal replies are directed here.
• Return-Path: a technical address used by InTouch’s email delivery service to receive delivery reports, such as messages saying an email could not be delivered.

The email standard for automatic responses recommends that out-of-office replies go to the Return-Path, rather than the Reply-To address.

If the recipient’s email system follows that recommendation, its automatic reply goes to InTouch’s email delivery service. InTouch does not forward automatic replies received through that delivery-report route to your firm’s sender.

This does not mean every automatic reply is lost. An automatic reply sent directly to your firm’s email address can still reach your mailbox. The route depends on the recipient’s email system.

Checking a missing reply

Ask the recipient’s IT team to check whether an automatic reply was generated and which address it was sent to. They can use the original email’s headers and a message trace to check the route.

For the IT team, the useful details are the sender and recipient addresses, the subject, and the date and time the original email was sent. The Reply-To and Return-Path headers show the two reply addresses.