Delayed-send in Outlook

Have you ever typed up an email in Outlook and hit “Send”, only to realize that you forgot an important point or an attachment, or addressed it to the wrong person? Made you wish you had a second chance to fix and re-send the email, right?

Well, you can. Set up a delayed-send in Outlook, so that the email sits in your Outbox for some time (say a minute, which is probably enough time to realize you made a mistake and re-do the email) before it’s released into the wild.

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A Safety Net for the Send Button

Delayed send is a simple idea: When you hit Send, Outlook automatically retains the message in your Outbox folder for a short length of time (for instance, one minute) before sending. Most times you won’t notice the delay. And if you hit Send and then realize you made a mistake, you can go to your Outbox, open up the message, modify it, and then re-send it – and the recipients never see the mistake.

But what about e-mails that need to be sent immediately? With a little more effort you can set up Outlook so that if you tag a message as urgent, it will be sent without the delay.

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Most of the time, that additional one minute delay (which you can work around) won’t matter. And for those times that you do mess up your email, well, there it is, sitting quietly in the Outbox for you!