Have you ever regretted sending an email right after you sent it and wished you could retrieve it from the ether before it reached your intended recipients?
You may unsend an email for a limited amount of time in both Gmail and Outlook, but you must first enable the option. Once activated, “Undo Send” will provide you with a limited window of opportunity to effectively retract your message before it reaches its intended recipient. The “Undo Send” function does not retrieve your email from other people’s inboxes; rather, it only delays the sending of your email, allowing you to change your mind before it’s too late.
How do you unsend an email in Gmail?
The “Undo Send” option in Gmail is set on by default, but you may change the duration that emails are held from the default of five seconds (too short, in my opinion) to 30 seconds. My timer is set at 10 seconds, but you may choose whatever works best for you.
- Go to Gmail Settings (cogwheel symbol) > Settings > and select the General tab to change your timeframe.
- “Undo Send” is located at the bottom of the page.
- Set the “Send cancellation period” to 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds, depending on what works best for you.
When you wish to undo an email, go to the “Message Sent” box and select “Undo.” The email you just sent will be reopened and saved to your “Drafts” folder. “Undo Send” is also available in the Gmail apps for Android and iOS. Find and click the “Cancel” box at the bottom of the screen.
How do you unsend an email in Outlook?
Unsending an email on the desktop version of Outlook works differently than in Gmail or Outlook.com. There is no option to “Undo Send.” Instead, create a rule that prevents all of your emails from being sent so that you may move emails from your “Outbox” to your “Drafts” folder. To set up postponed delivery, follow these steps:
- Choose “New Rule.”
- Choose “Apply rule on messages I send” from the drop-down menu.
“Next” should be selected. - To accept the warning about the rule being applied to every message you send, click “Next” once again and then “Yes.”
- Choose the option to “defer delivery by a number of minutes.”
- Choose a delay of 1 to 120 minutes by clicking on “a number of minutes.”
- Click on “Next” .
- You have the option of adding exceptions to the delivery delay or just selecting “Next.”
- Click “Finish” after giving your rule a name and making sure the “Turn on this rule” box is ticked.
- Select “Finish”
Outlook.com, like Gmail, stores emails for a period of time before sending them, providing you the option to resend an email you’ve already sent. However, “Undo Send” is not enabled by default in Outlook.com. This is how you enable “Undo Send.”
- Select “Settings” from the drop-down menu (the cogwheel icon).
- Select “View all Outlook Settings” from the drop-down menu.
- Select “Mail.”
- Select “Undo Send” from the drop-down menu.
When you wish to undo an email, go to the “Sending” box at the bottom of the Outlook.com window and click the “Undo” box. The email you just sent will be reopened and saved to your “Drafts” folder. Set the slider to anything between 0 and 10 seconds.
