We've all been there. You had a bad day… maybe a bad week (or year). You couldn't take it anymore. Maybe you had one too many bottles of... soda and then fired off a nasty message to your boss or to a customer. Maybe you just forgot to include an important attachment or didn't run a spell check, and your message was riddled with elementary-school grammar errors.
Whatever the reason, you need to recall an email message you sent using Outlook. Unfortunately, unlike some other common mail clients that make it very simple to quickly 'unsend' or 'undo' sent email messages, such as Gmail, the process is a bit more complicated in Outlook. However, it's not impossible to recall a sent email using Outlook, at least not if you fit can check the following boxes:
There's no feature to recall sent email messages in any version of Outlook for Mac. If this is a feature you'd like to see in future versions, please provide feedback at Microsoft's UserVoice site. The success or failure of a recall depends on the recipients' settings in Microsoft Outlook. The following four scenarios explain what happens in various situations, and an additional scenario describes the recall of a message sent to a Microsoft Exchange public folder. The recipient of the message you want to recall must also be using an Exchange email account. His option is not available using the Microsoft Outlook Web App (OWA) or Outlook 2011 for Mac. Step-by-step guide. In Mail, in the Navigation Pane, click Sent Items. Open the message that you want to recall or replace.
- You use Outlook 2016 for Windows. (There is currently no message recall feature available in Outlook for Mac.)
- Your Outlook mail account is connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server.
- The message you want to recall was sent to someone in your organization who is also using Outlook and is also connected to Exchange.
- The recipient has not read the message you want to recall.
Sep 04, 2012 Our enterprise e-mail and calendaring is running on Exchange 2010 and we have thousands of Mac users with Outlook 2011 and a thousand Linux users that use OWA to access their mailbox. Is it possible to recall a message using Outlook 2011 or OWA on Exchange 2010? I have reviewed these but they seem to apply to earlier clients and server versions. Oct 25, 2015 Can you recall a sent message in Outlook 2011 for Mac?
In other words, not everyone who uses Outlook for email can recall sent messages. If you fit all of the above requirements, here's how to unsend a message.
How to recall an Outlook email message
- In Outlook's Home tab, click Sent Items in the vertical column along the program's left side.
- Click to open the message you want to recall. (You must actually open the message to recall it. Highlighting the message isn't enough.)
- The sent message will open in Outlook's Message tab. From there, navigate to the Move section of that tab and click Actions.
- Click Recall this message.
- The following popup box provides two options: Delete unread copies of this message and Delete unread copies and replace with new message.
- You can also check the box for Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient if you want details on the success or failure of your recall attempt.
- If you only want to delete the sent message and don't wish to send a replacement, fill in the circle next to Delete unread copies of this message and hit OK.
- If you want to both recall the sent message and send another replacement message, fill in the circle next to Delete unread copies and replace with new message and hit OK.
- A new message window appears containing the text from the message you want to recall and resend. You should make any desired changes to the email body and then hit Send.
Note: This system isn't flawless and depending on the recipient's specific Outlook settings, and whether or not they read the original message or the replacement message first, your recall may not always be successful. But it's worth a try, right?
Some mail clients, such as Gmail, don't necessarily support Outlook's recall message, but you can still use the feature to send requests. Honestly, that might be even more insulting…
For more Outlook and Office 365 how-tos and tutorials, read:
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