Have you ever selected ‘reply to all’ and then pressed ‘send’ in Outlook, only to realise in horror that the email was sent to the wrong recipient?
If you have, you will know that your mind races to find possible ways to stop the message from being sent. ‘Recall’ seldom works quickly enough, and then you end up highlighting the fact to the unintended recipient when they see the message “… wishes to recall the message”. The mind races! “Maybe if I switch off the modem, or if I turn off the power to the PC!” Not fast enough. So is there a solution?
You might be interested to know that you can delay all of your sent messages by a minute or more in Outlook. This delay is a safeguard in case you need to delete a sent message before it goes to the Exchange Server.
1. Click on FILE in the Outlook toolbar
2. Click on the MANAGE RULES & ALERTS button
3. Click on the NEW RULE button
4. Select APPLY RULE ON MESSAGES I SEND
5. Click on the NEXT button twice
6. Answer YES to the question about applying it to all messages
7. Select the last option DEFER DELIVERY BY A NUMBER OF MINUTES
8. Click on ‘a number of’ in step 2, and enter the number of minutes to delay each message
9. Click on the NEXT button twice
10. Give your rule a name
11. Click on the FINISH button
12. Answer OK to the question about a Client-Only rule
13. Finally click on OK to exit
That’s all there is to it. Now if you do inadvertently include the wrong recipient, you will have time to go to the Outbox and delete the message before it is routed to the server.
Contributed by:
AJS Group of Companies