How to Limit Your Automated Reply

Q: Can I set up a vacation bounce message in Gmail? If so, do those replies go to everyone, including spammers looking for live addresses?

A: Gmail, along with other free mail services like Outlook.com, allows you to set up an automatic reply to new messages that hit your inbox when you’d like to unplug for an extended period. And if you don’t want the message to bounce back to everyone who sends you mail, you can limit who can receive your automated reply.

To set up a vacation response message in the desktop version of Gmail, click the gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner of the browser window and choose Settings from the menu. On the General tab of the Settings page, scroll down the page to the Vacation Responder section.

Click the button next to “Vacation responder on” and fill in the dates you’d like the automatic reply to be active. Fill in the Subject line and the body of the message explaining that you are away and will not be answering your mail. Below the message body, click the box next to “Only send a response to people in my Contacts.” to prevent the message from going out to anybody who is not in your Google address book.

If you do not use the web version, you can set up the reply in the Gmail mobile app for Android and iOS. Tap the Menu button in the upper-left corner and scroll down to Settings. Tap the name of your account, and, on the next screen, tap Vacation Responder.

On the Vacation Responder screen, tap the button to the On position. Fill in the dates for the automatic-reply period and the message you want to use, and then tap the button next to “Send only to my Contacts.”

Q: Amazon and other e-bookstores have a free section of old books in the public domain. Is there a similar place to find old movies that have lost their copyright and that I can legally watch for free on my phone or computer?

A: Thousands of films have either lost their copyright or been released into the public domain by their owners, and you can find them in several repositories around the web. Many of the available movies are from the mid-20th century and include works in a variety of genres, including the 1940 comedy “His Girl Friday,” with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant; the 1946 Judy Garland musical “Till the Clouds Roll By”; and “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” a 1964 science-fiction romp.

Wikipedia has a long list of the major films in the public domain that you can browse. The visual quality of the digitized movies may vary, but free is free.

With its colossal amount of content, YouTube is one place to browse. Some users have created channels devoted to public-domain films you can find by searching the site. In addition to its desktop website, YouTube has mobile apps for streaming video on the go; you can also lean back and watch at home through the YouTube app on many set-top TV boxes.

Some websites devoted to collections of public-domain films may simply link to content on YouTube anyway, as the Public Domain Flix site does. Public Domain Movies also has an organized collection of free movies, along with links to download MP4 copies to watch or copy to a mobile device when you have no internet connection.

The Internet Archive is another vast online vault of old movies to stream or download, including a large selection of feature films. The site also hosts thousands of short-format movies, video clips from NASA and the quirky Prelinger Archives of industrial and public service films.