I think we’ve all had that sinking “Oh no!” feeling when we’ve sent an Outlook email. Either you’ve forgotten to include an attachment or you’ve thought twice about what you said and you want to recall the email. In most cases an email can’t be recalled, but you can delay it being sent.

To add a delay to outgoing emails, use a rule:

  1. Choose Tools, Rules and Alerts and click on New Rule.
  2. Choose the Start from blank rule option and then select Check messages after sending and click Next.
  3. Click Next as all messages will be delayed (but you can set an exception shortly) and click Next and Ok again to confirm the rule will apply to all sent messages.
  4. Choose Defer delivery by a number of minutes and set this to the number to wait – say 2 minutes and click Next.
  5. Now, set an exception for messages that just have to be sent immediately, for example, select Except if it is marked as importance and set this to High.
  6. Click Next, type a name for the rule such as Delayed Send, enable the Turn on this rule checkbox and click Finish.

Now, when you click Send, your messages will be held for 2 minutes before being sent except if you make them High importance.

Helen Bradley