Wait Just a Minute: How to Defer Sending of Outlook Email

Ever sent an email only to regret it?  As Thomas Jefferson once said “When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.”  Well, sometimes the Send button gets pushed before you’ve had a chance to think things through.

Deb Shinder, who writes Sunbelt’s WXPNews, has a neat little technical trick to avoid Sender Regret:

1. In Outlook, click the Tools menu and select Rules and Alerts.
2. Click the New Rule … button.
3. In the Rules Wizard dialog box, click Start From a Blank Rule.
4. Under Step 1, select Check Messages After Sending.
5. Click Next.
6. Don’t select any conditions so the rule will apply to all messages, and click Next again.
7. Click Yes when asked if you want the rule to apply to all messages.
8. Under “Step 1: What do you want to do with the message?”, select Defer Delivery by a Number of Minutes.
9. Under “Step 2: Edit the Rule Description,” click “a number of” and set the Deferred Delivery setting to 1 minute. Click OK.
10. Click Finish.

Now when you hit Send, the message will remain in your Inbox for a minute, giving you a chance to recall it or change it.

Alex Eckelberry