In case that you need to warn a sender that you won’t accept his messages, or just let him know whatever automatically, Gmail can do that easily! Gmail is able to reply automatically to a sender with a message you can define at will. Here is how you need to configure Gmail to achieve this, in 3 steps: first, you enable the Canned Responses (Templates) feature, then you create a Canned Response, and finally you define a filter, the eMail address of the sender that should receive this response whenever he tries to contact you. Let’s see these steps in more details.

Canned Responses is a Gmail feature that lets you create templated responses that you can use anytime when you compose a message or automatically send using filters. To create such an autoresponder, go to Gmail settings by clicking the wheel at the right top corner, then Settings, then Advanced. Go to Canned Responses and enable them. Press the “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

Now that Canned Responses are enabled, you’d like to create your first one. Just click as normally to Compose a new message. Leave the subject and recipient fields empty and write your autoresponder according to what you’d like your recipient to read whenever he attempts to send you a message. Then go to the bottom right corner of your message window and click those dots to open the More Options menu > Canned Responses and select the New Canned Response to save your current message as an autoresponder. Note that the name you will give is also the subject of the autoresponder that your recipient will get when he sends you a message. In case you need later to modify this autoresponder, you will find it at the “Filters and Blocked Adresses” menu (at the top menu bar of Gmail).

Now that you have created your autoresponder it’s time to define the address of the recipient that will be receiving this autoresponder. Go to the Search box at the top of Gmail interface and click the little triangle at the right. At the dialogue that opens use the “From” field to define the address of the recipient of the autoresponder, then click the Create filter option. In the next dialogue choose whatever you like along with activating the Send template option where you select the Canned Response that you created in the previous step. Save your new filter and enjoy!