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I'm able to create a rule that replies to incoming emails with a template. That works as designed, however I would like for the reply to quote the original incoming email just like it would appear if I manually replied to it. At the moment the replies only have the template and nothing else.

I can't seem to figure out if this is possible - has anyone done it, and how?

Edit: More info - this is Outlook 2010 client on Windows 7. Server is Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 build 14.1.218

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Lets see if the bounty hunters can be tempted by the meager rep that I can spare :) – scuzzy-delta Mar 21 '11 at 22:43
Further clarification (prompted by Dan) - This is a rather pedestrian problem. Operating a small service desk that just needs to acknowledge incoming emails. While the existing "reply with template" does this, without the original email text, when the sender replies to the acknowledgement the context is lost, so here I'm trying to retain the content of the original email. I'm open to all suggestions, although installing something like OTRS is not an option sadly. – scuzzy-delta Mar 23 '11 at 5:41

2 Answers

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The article Copy body of email to Auto-reply in Outlook 2007 suggests the following script as solution:

Sub AutoReply(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
    Dim olkReply As Outlook.MailItem
    Set olkReply = Item.Reply
    With olkReply
        'Change the subject on the next line as desired'
        .Subject = "Your Subject Goes Here"
        'Change the body as desired'
        .HTMLBody = "Your reply text goes here.<bt><br>" & olkReply.HTMLBody
        .Send
    End With
    Set olkReply = Nothing
End Sub
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-∞ for Expertsexchange. – Hello71 Mar 22 '11 at 21:25
@Hello71: What's wrong with Expertsexchange? A very useful site. – harrymc Mar 22 '11 at 21:45
@harrymc: "experts-exchange" is "universally loathed". – Hello71 Mar 23 '11 at 2:03
@harrymc - One issue is that your link to the reference was obfuscated with some sort of javascript garbage that blocked the answer. Oh man I despise Expert's Exchange. – skub Mar 23 '11 at 3:43
1  
@Hello71: This is a technical support forum, and you are supposed to vote according to the usefulness of the answer. One gets help where one can, and there are some very clever people on experts-exchange. – harrymc Mar 23 '11 at 12:36
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up vote 1 down vote

Does it have to be a Reply? There are rule actions for both redirct and forward which might be "close enough" for your purposes.

There is also an "Out of Office" reply which might be useful.

While I realize neither of these directly answers your question, I'm trying to offer possible solutions to your problem—whatever that may be.

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Thanks for the reminder that I could have provided more context. Essentially yes, it does have to be a reply, or look very similar to one. I've added more detail as a comment to the question – scuzzy-delta Mar 23 '11 at 5:43

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