Out of Office Assistant for Exchange IM

I’m using Outlook 2000 and Exchange 5.5. I’m also using the Internet Mail Version of Exchange. I emulated the Out of the Office Assistant (see Microsoft Q248830) since the IM Version of Exchange doesn’t provide it. Here’s the problem: After deletingthe rule (all rules were deleted), people outside the company are stilling getting a message back that I’m out of the office, but users on our Exchange Server (within the company) don’t get the reply. How do I stop this?