Thunderbird has its own text editor, and we will use it to create our out of office reply message.

This will open the Thunderbird text editor, and you can write your reply.

- File, and Save As, Template 

Important. The name of the template is the same as the subject. As you will notice in the picture above, we called it "Out of office reply".

Save As happens very fast, and there is no feedback that acknowledges that the template was actually saved.

- Tools, and Message Filters 

Select New

The next step consists of setting up the rules.

Once you click on Reply with template in the left drop down menu, you will be able to select the Out of office reply from the second drop down menu.

As an option you may wish to mark your message as read, as shown below.

We now have to determine to whom the reply should apply.

I would log into your account at your providers web mail page and set up the message there. If you use the template and filter shown above you have to leave your computer running and hope it says running while you are gone. Most providers have this option right on the web mail page and then it works on the server.