Start and end dates are checked after the delivery option list has been read. There are two attributes whose names are controlled by the LDAP_START_DATE (default vacationStartDate) and LDAP_END_DATE (default vacationEndDate) MTA options, respectively. If one or more of the active delivery options specified the ^ prefix character, the values of these options are checked against the current date. If the current date is outside the range specified by these options, the delivery options with the ^ prefix are removed from the active set. For more information see 17.4 Vacation Autoreply Attributes.