OOO meaning: out of the office
OOO stands for out of office. You're away and won't reply until you return, whether on vacation, off sick, at a conference or at the dentist. The automatic email that tells people so is called an OOO too.
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Filed under O jargon.
What OOO means at work
Away, and saying so
OOO is short for out of office. A coworker who’s OOO is away and isn’t reading messages. It’s also the name of the automatic reply their inbox sends while they’re gone. The abbreviation was first recorded between 2000 and 2005.
Americans who are OOO for a week are on vacation. In British and Australian offices, the same week off is a holiday, or annual leave.
OOO for a single day
From the outside, most sick days and mornings at the dentist look the same. Both show up as a one-day OOO with no reason given. If your manager asks why, our excuses to call in sick rate each reason by how many more questions it invites.
OOO, OOTO and their neighbors
OOTO stands for out of the office. It’s one extra letter for the same meaning, and you’ll mostly see it in chat. These four corporate jargon terms often turn up around an OOO:
| Word | What it says about you |
|---|---|
| WFH | Where you’re working, while OOO says you aren’t |
| PTO | The paid days you use up while OOO |
| Unlimited PTO | There’s no balance, so the OOO is often the only record of the days you took |
| EOY | Promised in November, then due in December, when everyone’s OOO |
What a good OOO says
A good OOO gives your return date and the name of whoever is covering for you. It also says whether you’ll look at email while you’re away, and what happens to the emails that pile up. If you want a joke in it as well, take one from our funny out-of-office messages.
How OOO shows up on screen
Out of office and available
In Microsoft Teams, your status reads Out of Office while automatic replies are on or a calendar event is marked Out of Office. If you use Teams during that time, it adds your usual status too. Colleagues then see you on vacation and available at once.
The OOO calendar block
On a shared calendar, an OOO block says the whole day is gone. A Busy block only says you’re in a meeting. That makes OOO a favorite for days that aren’t vacations. Block out a Friday every few weeks as OOO and nobody asks what it’s for.
The OOO in practice
The OOO that answers anyway
Plenty of people keep answering email with the OOO on. Others never set one, so nobody at work knows they’re away. People who took a secret vacation like that in the past year averaged four trips.
| US workers who | Share |
|---|---|
| Check work email while on leave (full-time) | Nearly half |
| Send replies while on leave (full-time) | 42% |
| Took a vacation in the past year without using leave or telling their manager | Close to 1 in 5 |
| Took time off without telling their manager (millennials) | 37% |
The last day before the OOO
The day before leave, every email you ignored for a month gets answered and the handover gets written at 6 pm. At 6:40 the auto-reply goes on, and at 6:45 someone replies to it with one more question.
When an OOO goes wrong
An OOO usually goes wrong in one of two ways. The first is the dates. Leave last month’s return date in it, and the reply tells every client you never came back. The second is the audience. A reply written for coworkers can also reach clients and strangers. Before you leave, email yourself from a personal account and check that the reply makes sense to someone outside the company.
OOO in philosophy
In philosophy, OOO means object-oriented ontology, a school of thought about objects and what can be known of them.
An automatic reply with OOO in it
Subject: Automatic reply: Q4 vendor list
I’m
OOOaway, checking email twice a day from Monday, December 21 to Friday, January 1, with spotty signal and no laptop. For vendor contracts, email Dana Ruiz. Everything else gets read in January, oldest first.
OOO in a sentence
I'm OOO until the 14th with limited access to email.
Marta's auto-reply says she's OOO until Monday, but she answered my email in four minutes.
I'll be OOO at the conference Thursday and Friday, Bram. Message Talia if the site goes down.
Put OOO in the calendar for your dentist at 2, Gunnar, or someone will book a sync on top.
Questions about OOO
What does ooo mean in texting?
From a colleague, OOO in capitals means out of office. Lower-case ooo at the end of a friend's message can mean hugs, like the o in xoxo.
What does OOO today mean?
They're out for the day and won't be answering, usually because they're sick or at an appointment. Expect a reply the next workday.
Is OOO in the dictionary?
Yes, major dictionaries list OOO as the abbreviation for out of office, both for being away and for the automatic email reply. Its first recorded use falls between 2000 and 2005.
What does OOTO mean?
Out of the office, the longer form of OOO. It means the same thing and turns up mostly in chat statuses and texts.
What does OOF mean in an out of office?
OOF is Microsoft's name for the out of office reply, and its Exchange documentation still uses it. It began as the auto-reply command in the company's email system of the late 1980s. People say it stands for out of facility, but the company archivist found no record of anyone saying so.
Sources
The 14 sources behind this page
- Cambridge Dictionary: OOO | English meaning
- Dictionary.com: OOO Definition & Meaning
- Wiktionary: OOTO
- Microsoft Learn: User presence in Teams
- Empower: Pursuit of PTO: Half of Americans feel tied to their emails on vacation
- Fortune: 'Quiet vacations' are the latest way millennials are rebelling against in-person work
- Microsoft Support: How to set up out of office automatic replies in Outlook
- Wiktionary: OOO
- Wiktionary: ooo
- Microsoft: The secret history of the out of office message
- Microsoft Learn: Understand and troubleshoot Out of Office (OOF) replies
- Cambridge Dictionary: HOLIDAY | English meaning
- Cambridge Dictionary: ANNUAL LEAVE | English meaning
- Fair Work Ombudsman: Annual leave