Using out of office message reply

Hello,

I have a question here about using the Out of Office function in Outlook 2000. Can I enable this function to also reply to any external e-mail addresses (apart from the same domain)?

Eg.
If somebody@yahoo.com sends a message to me@mycompany.com while I’m away and I have this option checked, will the Out of Office message be sent to this person (somebody@yahoo.com)?

I have noted that only the recipients on the same domain are able to receive the message? Is this true? How do work around this?

I would appreciate any feedback on this.

Thank you,
Joyce