Eliminate the "Oh No!" Moment from Sending Emails

by Richard Thomas

Have you ever sent an email and then immediately wished you could ‘unsend’ it? I know I have. You realise you didn’t actually attach the attachment. You didn’t mention a critical factor for consideration. You didn’t copy in all the right people. The consequences could be anything from mildly embarrassing to career-ending.

Now I’m not saying this is an everyday problem. Maybe three or four times a year I want to edit an email after sending it. But for those occasions, it’s really nice to have an undo button.

Using the Rules Wizard in Microsoft Office Outlook, this is easy to arrange. You can write a rule that holds all emails you send in your Outbox for a few minutes before letting them go. I set the delay period to five minutes to be on the safe side, but in my experience if I realise I’ve made an error it’s usually within about 20 seconds of hitting send. If you’re the same, you might want to make the delay period shorter.

If you set up a rule like this, I also recommend making the Outbox one of your favourite folders. This will make the Outbox appear at the top of the Navigation Pane on the left of your mailbox screen so you can get to it as quickly as possible. You can always display the Outbox from wherever you are within Outlook using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.

Setting up a rule like this does put a delay on all emails you send, so if getting messages out immediately is important you might want to set a very short holding period. Otherwise, you can set certain conditions in which sending happens immediately, such as if you mark the email as having high importance. In most people’s cases though, a delay of a few minutes in sending an email is unlikely to be a problem.

A step-by-step guide to setting up a rule for this is in this Productivity Base article:

Create a Rule to Delay Sending of Emails

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