- Although a user can set an auto-reply message from within Outlook, the email client isn't really doing the auto-replies itself. Instead, it is passing these instructions to Microsoft Exchange Server, a proprietary email server with which Outlook interfaces. When Exchange receives an incoming email for an Outlook user with auto-reply, it does two things: sends the automated reply back to the sender and passes the incoming message off to the recipient's inbox.
- Because Thunderbird is an open-source application, it doesn't have the luxury of being able to count on a specific email server to handle its commands. Instead, Thunderbird must work with a wide array of email servers, each of which handles auto-replies in its own way. As a result, Thunderbird can't have a simple built-in interface for sending auto-reply commands to the server the way Outlook does.
- Some users can add auto-reply functionality to Thunderbird by installing an add-in called Out of Office. This add-in relies on an extension to the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) that supports both auto-replies and email forwarding. Not all email servers support this IMAP extension, but if yours does, Out of Office will let you set up an automated reply from within Thunderbird and will send those instructions to the email server.
- Although Thunderbird can't send auto-reply instructions to your email server, you may be able to do the job yourself. Many popular email servers -- including Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast and Charter -- allow you to directly set up an automatic reply using your web browser. Each server handles this in a slightly different way, but the result is the same -- Thunderbird gets the incoming email and the sender gets your automatic reply.
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