Vacation reply will not operate if mail forwarding is on. I can use one or the other. Can't I use both??

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It's been almost 2 months that I use my Outlook.com address regularly. When I go to the Vacation reply option it is asking me to Verify myself or wait a few days to make sure I'm not a spammer... two months is way more then a  few days...
A hacker set up a vacation auto reply in my account, and going into options to undo it does not work.  How can I get rid of it? 
Not sure how to explain this.  I get to my Hotmail account with an icon in my taskbar.  I have been trying to turn off ny vacation reply using the account on my computer.  Just now went into google and googled Hotmail and signed in that way.  Found the vacation reply area so was able to turn off.  How do I get the Hotmail account that I can access thru the internet to be as convenient as the one I have on my computer?  This doesn't make any sense to me so I hope someone can make some sense of it.  Thank you so much.