One really quick way is to use OWA - if you've rights on their mailbox you can browse to the OWA and stick their user account name on the end.
You can then set out of office in options.
e.g. http://servername/exchange/accountname
I believe this is not possible using just the Out of Office Assistant. This was done to stop infinite OOO message loops, bringing Exchange servers to their knees in the event of two people having OOO messages set, with a message being sent from one to the other.
It can be done however, using Message Rules, but this is not advisable (for the aforementioned reason).
UPDATE:
Ok, found a dirty hack that will allow you to do what you requested - however, it is a really dirty hack.
You'd need to customise the script for an individual user (if you have many users, they need one each). Place the script on the Exchange server, and Schedule the script to run once a day. The reason this works is because each time you re-enable the OOA, it wipes the list of people it has sent OOO messages to. You would of course need to remember to remove the script when the user returns to work, otherwise everyday it would re-enable their OOA.
Also, change line 3 and 4 for your environment, and the user in question.
Set objMAPISession = CreateObject(”MAPI.Session”)
strExchangeSvr = "svr-exch-01.yourdomain.loc"
strMailbox = "jane.doe"
strMAPI = strExchangeSvr & vbLf & strMailbox
On error Resume Next
objMAPISession.Logon “”, “”, False, True, 0, False, strMAPI
If err <> 0 Then
Wscript.Echo “An Error occured: ” & err.description
Err.clear
Wscript.Sleep 7000
Wscript.Quit
End If
strOOOMessage = "Jane is having babies and will be absent for a while. Please try again after October. Ciao"
objMAPISession.OutOfOffice = False
objMAPISession.OutOfOfficeText = strOOOMessage
objMAPISession.OutOfOffice = True
strOOOMessage = objMAPISession.OutOfOfficeText
objMAPISession.Logoff
Set objMAPISession = Nothing
Please note: I have not tested this. You will need to deploy it with a test Mailbox, and do some testing with it.
Wow, I need a shower after that.
Best Answer
Try checking
Help > Disabled Items, and if the Out Of Office Assistant is in the list, enable it.Also try looking at Tools > Trust Center > Add-ins
at the bottom of the screen choose Manage 'Exchange Client Extensions' and click 'Go'. Make sure that 'Exchange Extensions commands' and 'Exchange Extensions property pages' are ticked.
If not, try running
Help > Office DiagnosticsIf your outex2.ecf file is missing Office Diagnostics should offer to reinstall it.