A closure notice in your email signature should say three things: the dates you are closed, the day you reopen, and who to contact for anything urgent. Everything else is optional. Below are three templates you can copy, short, full and bilingual French-English, and a few rules for writing the dates and for making the notice disappear when the holidays end.
What should a holiday closure notice contain?
- The closing dates. The first and the last day you are closed, so there is no doubt about the period.
- The reopening day. It is the date people plan around; give it separately.
- A contact for urgent matters. A named person with a phone number or an email address, or a shared mailbox someone will actually read.
- Season's greetings (optional). One line at the end is enough.
Leave out opening hours, public holidays and anything else you cannot keep up to date: a notice that is wrong is worse than none.
Which template should I use?
Replace every bracketed field. Nothing here is a legal text: the wording is meant to be adapted to your organization.
1. Short notice
For internal threads, quick replies and organizations that want a single line under the name.
Our office is closed from [start date] to [end date] and reopens on [reopening date]. For urgent matters, contact [name] at [phone number].2. Full notice
For customers and partners: dates, reopening, what to expect and who to call.
Holiday closure
[Company name] is closed from [weekday, month, day] through [weekday, month, day] and reopens on [weekday, month, day].
We will reply to your message when we are back. For anything urgent, please contact [name, title] at [phone number or email address].
Happy holidays from everyone at [Company name].3. Bilingual notice (French and English)
For organizations that write to customers in both languages. Put the language most of your recipients speak first.
[Company name] is closed from [start date] to [end date] and reopens on [reopening date]. For urgent matters: [name], [phone number]. Happy holidays!
[Nom de l'entreprise] est fermée du [date de début] au [date de fin] inclusivement et rouvrira le [date de réouverture]. En cas d'urgence : [nom], [téléphone]. Joyeuses Fêtes !How do I write the dates and the contact line?
- Spell the month out. "December 24" is read the same way everywhere; 12/24 and 24/12 are not, because readers do not all expect the same order.
- Add the weekday. It lets readers check the date against their own calendar at a glance.
- Keep it to two or three lines. The notice sits under every message you send; a long one buries your name and title.
- Do not rely on a picture alone. If the notice lives in an image, many people will not see it until they load images. Put the key facts in text.
- Name a real contact. Check that the person is reachable during the closure and agrees to be named.
For the rest of the signature, the guide professional email signature templates covers the elements to keep and the ones to cut.
How do I make the notice disappear when the closure ends?
This is where closure notices usually go wrong: they are still in the signatures in February. Two approaches avoid it.
- A scheduled banner. In ATOM Signatures, a campaign has a start date and an optional end date, can be aimed at every employee or at one group, and, with an end date, stops showing on that date. The steps are in the guide schedule a holiday banner for every employee in Microsoft 365. The banner can also carry the text of the notice, as long as the dates are repeated in the alternative text.
- A line in the signature itself. Simple, but it stays until someone edits it. If you do this, add the reminder to remove it to your January to-do list, and see signatures by Microsoft 365 group if only some teams close.
If you want a short signature for colleagues and a full one for customers, the post on internal and external signatures in Outlook shows how to choose automatically; the notice then only needs to go in the external one. For a comparison with the built-in option, see ATOM vs the native Microsoft 365 signature.
Is a notice in the signature the same as an automatic reply?
No. The notice tells everyone you write to that you will be away; it does not answer a message received while you are gone. Keep the automatic reply for that. Microsoft's own advice is to send automatic replies to people outside your organization to contacts only: otherwise the reply goes to every email you receive, including newsletters, advertisements and potentially junk email.
Frequently asked questions
What should a closure notice in an email signature say?
Three things: the closing dates, the day you reopen and someone to reach for urgent matters, with a phone number or email address. Everything else, such as season's greetings, is optional.
How long before the closure should the notice go in?
We suggest one to two weeks before the closure, so that customers have time to send what they need. This is our team's recommendation, not a rule.
Does the notice need to be bilingual?
If you write to customers in both French and English, yes: the bilingual template saves you from choosing. Put the language most of your recipients speak first, then the other under the same notice.
Does a notice in the signature replace the automatic reply?
No. The notice informs everyone you write to, but it does not answer a message received while you are away. For automatic replies to people outside the organization, Microsoft recommends sending them to contacts only, otherwise they go out in reply to every email received, newsletters and junk email included.
A closure notice that removes itself. With ATOM Signatures, a banner campaign has a start date and an optional end date, and is included at no extra cost: CA$1 per user per month, plus taxes, with a 14-day free trial.
Sources
- Microsoft Support — Send automatic out-of-office replies from Outlook (replies outside the organization): support.microsoft.com
Source consulted on November 2, 2026. The templates are examples to adapt, not a legal or regulatory text.