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.

Pause work email without losing personal email

The right boundary is sometimes an account, not an app. If personal and work inboxes share Outlook or Gmail, switching off notifications for the whole app also silences your personal messages. An app blocker likewise restricts both inboxes because it selects the app.

Apple Mail offers a narrower route: switch off Mail for the work account, or use a Mail Focus filter for selected accounts. Leave personal accounts enabled. If the work account is managed and these controls are unavailable, check with your IT team before removing it. You can also use a separate app for work if your organization supports it.

What to restore when you return

1. Confirm that your automatic reply ended, or switch it off in Outlook, Gmail or the provider where you set it.
2. Turn Mail back on for the work account if you disabled it. End the vacation Focus if you used one.
3. Restore the notification settings you changed, and check that your normal evening or weekend schedule still applies.
4. End any temporary app restriction that did not have an automatic end date. Check for new messages before assuming the inbox is empty.

A small note of the settings you changed is more useful than removing the whole account and guessing later. Neither disabling Mail nor filtering an inbox deletes the server mailbox. If you only need help with the reply itself, use the account-by-account iPhone out-of-office guide.

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.