Is there a way to automatically reply to emails?

I periodically get “Hello, I am out of the office until 2024. This is an automatic message.”
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@gailcalled But how do you do that?

OK, so I think I’ve found a way to send automatic emails based on a template, but is there a way for the computer to read the contents of the email, carry out calculations, and send the result.

I use a server on Mail.com and it has a function called auto-reply, that sends a message back to the sender automatically .

You use a filter to trap for e-mails that meet conditions you set (e.g., sender name, subject line, whatever), and then the action is to send a reply that you specify.

“Automagically,” like “snail mail,” was cute once, the first time I heard it, which was a long time ago now. Since then it is simply annoying.

What if I did not know exactly what the reply would contain? Let’s say my goal to to make it so that I can email my computer a mathematical expression, and have it email back the result. How would I do that?

@Jeruba Yeah, I agree. I’ve used “automagically” more times in this thread than my entire memerable life combined, and the joke is already getting old.

@PhiNotPi You can ask Google to use one of their email scanners to read the email, search for a question and then answer it and send it back. I doubt it’s much of a heavy lift for them, in fact they’ve probably done it.

But I am not so sure it would be useful. Probably easier to just ignore the email than to have a machine reply to your friends.

Whatever program you read you email in probably has facilities for some automatic actions taken on incoming email. MS Outlook has a huge list of things it can look for, things it will do, things it will not do, into what bin the message is copied or moved, ... including automatic reply-to.
Thunderbird (on linux) has some similar but not quite extensive facilities.

Having your system check for mathematical expressions and respond with results is another ball-game. You’d want to run your own incoming email server and have some sidecar processing on that to do your special trick.

Oh, goodness, @PhiNotPi, I have no idea. Never heard of such a thing. That would take an actual program of some kind and not a utility with automatic functions that check standard message fields and take predefined actions. It would be more like rules that say

If sender = ‘MyBoss’ and subject contains ‘assignment’ send reply ‘Will do.’
If subject contains ‘viarga’ transfer to Trash.
If ToName = ‘MyScreenName’ send reply ‘On vacation. Will get back to you.’ and transfer to ‘Social’ folder.

My main use for filters while I was working was to sort certain messages into project and action folders (and highlight everything that came from my boss in hot pink). With my personal accounts, it’s mainly to separate some incoming things into special folders and send some messages directly to the trash.

I have one account whose sole function is to receive and forward messages to another account.

I could think of uses for such a program, but apart from an automated out of office message, I don’t know enough about computers to add to the technical discussion. The out of office message goes to any email you receive when that function is enabled.

Imagine if when an email arrived from my boss saying “can you do this extra task” it could say “No! Bugger off and give it to one of the people who have time to live in the coffee shop!” Ahh…. now I am having day dreams.

I do not know of any facilities within the common email apps (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.) that would do what you want, especially the part about parsing the email text, performing a mathematical calculation and emailing you the result. You would probably have to write such a program yourself, but should not be too difficult, depending on the complexity of the mathematical calculation, of course. Have you looked into the unix program called “sendmail”? It might help.

There may be a way to leverage the resources of Wolfram Alpha if you can figure out how to jack it into your email server.

(On the other hand just skip the email part and go straight to Wolfram, either the web site directly or the mobile app could do a lot with mathematical equations.)

Gmail has this feature. It is called Vacation Responder. Of course, you do not have to use it when you are just going on vacation. It’s found in the settings of Gmail, and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the General tab.