ReplyLater.com

Manual

ReplyLater.com runs a computer program that converts the email address you wrote your email to in to a time to reply to that email.

You can specify:

Days of the Week

Get an email the next time this day comes around, at the stroke of midnight. Full names and three-letter abbreviations are both accepted.

Example: Email and you'll receive a reply next monday.

Days of the week: sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday

Abbreviations: sun, mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat

Tomorrow

Email and you'll receive a reply as soon as tomorrow comes around, at the stroke of midnigt tonight.

Months

Get an email the next time this month comes around, at the stroke of midnight on the 1st. Full names and three-letter abbreviations are both accepted.

Example: Email and you'll receive a reply next October 1st.

Months: january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december

Abbreviations: jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec

Years

Get an email as soon as this year comes around.

Example: Email and you'll receive a reply on January 1st, 2009, at the stroke of midnight.

Note: The year number must be four digits long and no greater than 2037.

Dates

Example: Email and receive a reply on June 7th, 2009 at the stroke of midnight.

Dates can be specified in one of four formats: YYYY-M-D, YY-M-D, M-D, or D where:

A leading zero is allowed on month or day numbers that are less than 10.

The formats MD or DM will also work if the month is specified as a word.

Times of Day

Get an email the next time this time of day comes around, which could be today or tomorrow, depending on what time it is now.

Example: Email and receive a reply at 9:30am tomorrow (if 9:30am has passed) or today (if it's before 9:30am).

Time of day syntax: H_MMam, H_MMpm, or H_MM where H is a number between 1 and 23 and MM is a two-digit number between 00 and 59. In the absence of am or pm, the time is interpreted as a 24-hour time. So specifies 4:30pm.

Durations - specific amounts of time

Get an email precisely some number of minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years from now. You can use singular or plural (minute or minutes) and you can also use the abbreviations min and mon.

Example: Email and get an email exactly one week from now.

Valid Units of Time: minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years

Abbreviations: min, mon

Durations may be preceded by a - or + sign, as in -5days or +5days. The + sign has no effect, but the - sign makes a duration negative, which is useful when they are used in Combinations.

Combinations

You can combine any of the "tokens" defined above in nearly any way that makes sense. Here are a couple of examples:

Send an email to: And we'll reply to you:
5:30pm on March 14th, 2009.
The next April 24th at the stroke of midnight.
The next May 8th at the stroke of midnight.
Exactly one week from October 1st, 2009.
Exactly 1 year and 2 months from now.
Exactly 42 days and 12 hours from now.
The first Monday in 2009.

Tokens may be separated by periods but this is optional.

The order of tokens in a combination does NOT matter. You can put tokens in any order that you want.

However, it helps to put your Durations last. This is because in any combination that has Durations and other types of tokens the Durations are applied last. For eample, may.1week and 1week.may both mean "go to the start of may and then add 1 week" and they do NOT mean "move forward one week, then go the start of the next may". This distinction is subtle, but it makes a years-worth of difference if you happen to be sending the email any time from May 25th to May 31st. Therefore, to understand the email address better, you should put durations at the end, as in .

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