# Why was an automatic reply counted as a reply?

> An out-of-office or auto-responder changed a contact's status: how Reply classifies automatic messages, what each classification does, and how to correct one.

**Reply classifies every incoming message as a bounce, an out-of-office, an automatic reply, or a real reply, and the classification decides what happens to the contact. Out-of-office pauses the contact and resumes it later; an automatic reply finishes it. Neither is counted as a reply in your statistics.**

_Status: Reviewed – written against Reply's product documentation on 2026-09-21, not yet confirmed against the running product._

## Quick fix

1. Open the contact and check its status. **Out Of Office** means paused and due to resume on its own; **Finished** with an **Auto reply** sub-status means an auto-responder ended it.
2. If the classification is wrong, set the status back yourself: **People** tab → select the contact → **Change Status** → **Active**.
3. To find every contact this happened to, filter the People tab by the **Auto-replied** status.
4. Check your reply statistics – automatic messages are excluded from them, so the numbers should be unaffected.

Didn't work? [Contact Reply support](https://support.reply.io/); the team can check your account directly.

## Symptom

A contact stopped mid-sequence, or finished, after an automatic message arrived. Nobody actually answered. The status may be **Out Of Office**, or **Finished** with an **Auto reply** sub-status, and follow-ups have stopped going out.

## How Reply classifies an incoming message

Messages are tested in a fixed order, and the first match decides. This order is why a message that looks like two things at once lands where it does.

| Order | Test | Result |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | The message is a bounce, including a provider's sending-limit warning | **Bounce** |
| 2 | The **subject** says out of office | **Out of office** |
| 3 | The subject looks automatic **and** the body mentions being out of office | **Out of office** |
| 4 | The subject looks automatic and the body does **not** mention being out of office | **Automatic reply** |
| 5 | The subject is ordinary but the body mentions being out of office | **Out of office** |
| 6 | The message carries automatic-responder headers | **Automatic reply** |
| – | Nothing matched | **Reply** |

Two details explain most surprises. **Out of office wins over automatic reply** whenever both look true (rule 3) so a vacation responder is treated as a pause, not an ending. And from rule 4 onward only the **beginning of the message body** is scanned for out-of-office wording, so a long human reply that mentions a holiday near the end is still treated as a real reply.

## What each classification does

| Classification | Contact status | Sequence | Counted as a reply? |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Out of office** | **Out Of Office** | Paused, then resumed automatically | No |
| **Automatic reply** | **Finished**, sub-status **Auto reply** | Ended | No |
| **Bounce** | **Finished** | Ended | No |
| **Reply** | Depends on the sequence's reply handling – see [Why is a contact still active after replying?](/troubleshooting/contact-remained-active-after-reply/) | Ends or continues | Yes |

Bounces, out-of-office messages and automatic replies **ignore the sequence's reply-handling setting**. Setting a sequence to continue sending after a reply does not keep a contact running past a bounce or an auto-responder.

## Diagnostic checklist

1. Open the message itself. Read its subject and its opening lines, then compare them with the order above; that is exactly what Reply did.
2. Check the contact's status and sub-status. **Auto reply** as a sub-status is the signal that rule 4 or 6 matched.
3. Check the statistics before assuming they are wrong. Automatic messages are excluded from contacted and replied figures, so a status change does not move your reply rate.
4. If the same sender does this repeatedly, look at the wording their responder uses; it is what the classification reads.

## Resolution

### The message was a real reply, misclassified

Set the status back manually: **People** tab → select the contact → **Change Status** → **Active**, then answer from the thread. The contact resumes from where it stopped.

### It was an out-of-office and you want the contact to continue now

Out-of-office contacts resume on their own after the period Reply recorded. To bring one back earlier, set its status to **Active**.

### You want to see automatic messages in the inbox

By default they are not shown. Change the handling in **Settings** → **Emails** → **Email Safety** from **Do not display** to **Display** or **Display & mark as read**.

### You want to review them in bulk

Filter the People tab by the **Auto-replied** status. Reply has no separate inbox label for automatic messages; if you want one, create a custom inbox category and assign it to those threads.

## Verification

Re-open the contact: the status is the one you set, and the next step is scheduled again. For a whole batch, re-filter by **Auto-replied** and confirm the list is empty of contacts you have corrected.

## Prevention

- Expect out-of-office messages during holiday periods and treat the pause as intended behaviour: those contacts come back on their own.
- Before reacting to a batch of finished contacts, check whether the reply rate actually moved. Usually it has not.
- Where a contact's responder is repeatedly misread, mark them manually rather than changing the sequence's reply handling, which affects everyone.

## FAQ

### Does an out-of-office end the sequence for that contact?

No. It pauses the contact and Reply resumes them automatically. Only automatic replies and bounces finish a contact.

### Do automatic replies count towards my reply rate?

No. Bounces, out-of-office messages and automatic replies are all excluded from contacted and replied figures, and reported separately.

### Can I stop Reply from finishing a contact on an automatic reply?

Not through the sequence's reply-handling setting: automatic replies and bounces bypass it. Set the contact back to **Active** manually instead.

## Still stuck? Contact Reply support

If these steps didn't solve the problem, the Reply support team can look at your
account directly. Open the [Reply Help Center](https://support.reply.io/) and send
the team a message.

To get an answer faster, include:

- the subject line and the first few lines of the message that was misclassified
- the contact's current status and sub-status
- which sequence the contact is in, and roughly when the message arrived
- your timezone

Don't send passwords, API keys, or access tokens.

## Related

- [Why was a reply not detected?](/troubleshooting/reply-was-not-detected/) – the opposite problem
- [Why is a contact still active after replying?](/troubleshooting/contact-remained-active-after-reply/)
- [Statuses](/reference/statuses/) – every contact status and sub-status
- [Process replies](/how-to/process-replies/)

## Build with Reply

- Webhooks: [Webhook events](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) – an automatic reply raises its own event, separate from a reply
- MCP: [docs.reply.io/mcp](https://docs.reply.io/mcp/overview) – review and correct contact statuses from an assistant