Turn off work email on vacation.

Before you go

• Auto-reply with your return date and who to contact instead. Set it to end a day after you’re back, so your first morning is for catching up.
• Silence the mail app for the whole trip.
• Block the app until the morning you’re back, so checking isn’t an option.
• Chat too: pause Slack and set Teams quiet hours.

Outlook: automatic replies and Do Not Disturb

Set an automatic reply

1. In Outlook, open the menu at the top left, tap Settings, then your work account.
2. Tap Automatic Replies and turn them on.
3. Set a time period, so replies start and stop on their own. Depending on your account, you can also block your calendar and decline meetings for those dates.
4. Write your message. You can send a different one to people outside your organization.

Automatic Replies in the app work for Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com accounts, not for Gmail, Yahoo or IMAP accounts added to Outlook.

Silence it

Outlook has its own Do Not Disturb: open the menu at the top left and tap the bell. You can silence it for an hour, until tomorrow, or on a schedule for evenings or weekends. None of those covers a two-week trip, so for a vacation turn off its notifications in iOS instead: SettingsNotificationsOutlook, then turn off Allow Notifications.

Gmail: the vacation responder

1. In the Gmail app, open the menu, tap Settings and pick your account.
2. Tap Vacation responder and turn it on.
3. Set the first and last day, a subject and your message. Turn on Send only to my Contacts if you’d rather strangers didn’t hear you’re away.
4. Tap Done.

It syncs with Gmail on the web and switches itself off after the last day. Someone who writes twice gets the reply again only after four days. To silence it, turn off notifications at SettingsNotificationsGmail.

Apple Mail: switch the account off, or filter it

Switch the account off

If your work account lives in Apple’s Mail app, you can take it off your phone for the trip without deleting anything. Go to SettingsAppsMailMail Accounts (on older versions, SettingsMailAccounts), tap your work account and turn off Mail. Your work inbox disappears from the app until you switch it back on; nothing is deleted from the server. Exchange accounts also have an Automatic Reply option in the same account settings.

Or hide it with a Focus filter

A Focus filter hides the work inbox only while a Focus is on, so there’s nothing to switch back. Go to SettingsFocus and pick or add a Focus. Under Focus filters, tap Add Filter, tap Mail and select only your personal accounts. While that Focus is on, Mail shows just those inboxes. Give the Focus a schedule and it works for evenings too.

Keep work email closed until you’re back

Screen Time’s Downtime repeats by day of the week, so it has no simple “until the 14th”. Out of Office does:

1. Pick your work apps once: Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Teams, whatever counts.
2. Add a one-off vacation range, from the day you leave to the morning you’re back.
3. Go. Every work app stays shielded until then, even with Out of Office closed. If it overlaps your evening schedule, the shields stay up until the last one ends.