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How To: Retrieve Sent Emails

We’ve all done it – hit the “send” button and yelled “DOH!”. You might have forgotten an attachment or hit “reply all” instead of just reply. If you use Outlook you can use a workaround… delaying all outgoing mails for a couple of minutes before they actually send. That gives you a bit of breathing space to capture and edit if necessary!

  • In Outlook, click on Tools -> Rules and Alerts.
  • Under the “E-mail Rules” tab click on “New Rule”.
  • Choose “Start from a blank rule” and select “Check messages after sending”.
  • Click the “Next” button.
  • Select the condition “on this machine only” (you may have to scroll down to the bottom of the list).
  • Click the “Next” button.
  • Select “defer delivery by a number of minutes”.
  • Click “a number of” in the bottom box and change it to the length of time you want to set for delay. I use 2 minutes and find it is enough but use your own judgment here.
  • Click the “Next” button.
  • This screen gives you options for exclusions to the rule — just skip it by clicking the “Next” button.
  • Finish the rule set up by naming the rule. “Doh-saver” is a good one!
  • Be sure the box is checked to “Turn on this rule” and click “Finish”.
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2 Comments

  1. Bernadette Jones on 24 November, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    What an absolutely brilliant tip. Thank you so much!

  2. Amanda Bode on 30 November, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Fantastic – I thought I was quite advanced in most of MS Office but its does so much and you don’t always have time to find out little tricks like this. Thanks so much for this lifesaver!

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