I know I have been writing about Google products for the last couple of months. Since they are the number one free email provider in the world that makes sense…for me anyway. Today we will talk about one that many have asked me about over the years… the “oops” button (my lingo). Not just for Google’s Gmail but Microsoft’s (Hotmail, Live and Outlook.com) as well. They are respectively, the first and second most popular free email services online.
Pretend you just sent your boss an email telling him you have had it. As you hit “Send” you freak out and know you should not have done it. What can you do? Well you could start packing up your office in a box.
You may also have the option of recalling that email. It is available in both Gmail and Outlook.com accounts. It is also available in the Outlook application that you or your office may use. Today we will talk about the online versions. If you need to know how to use it in Outlook application check with your support team. I agree Microsoft has overused the word “Outlook” in too many areas that are email related but different products.
In both Outlook.com and Gmail you have the ability to not recall exactly but to cancel an email delivery.
In Gmail click the menu gear on the upper right corner of your screen then click Settings, shown below.
You should be at the General tab, if not select that one. Scroll down to the fifth item “Undo Send” and look to the right. There you will find two controls. First you check “Enable Undo Send” then select the amount of time you want to have to make the decision to stop an email. The minimum is 10 seconds with a maximum of 30. Once done scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the “Save changes” button.
Now when you send an email from Gmail you will have a 30 second chance to stop the email. You will have a menu bar appear at the top of the Gmail window which says, “Your message has been sent. Undo View message.” Click “Undo” and the message will be stopped and opened up. If you close it you will find it in your drafts folder. There you can edit it to resend or delete it as you wish.
To set this up in Outlook, click the menu gear icon. Choose Options at the bottom of the list. On the left under Mail/Automatic Processing click “Undo send.” There you will have the same two settings called “Let me cancel messages I’ve sent for:” and the time. The times are the same as Gmail, 10 to 30 seconds.
At the time of this writing the feature was not available in Yahoo mail, the third most popular free email. I am surprised at this; however, they all have their pluses and minuses. I read in one of the Yahoo support forums that you save your “questionable” email as a draft and consider sending it before you actually do. Come on now…really?
