How 2 ...delay sending Outlook e-mail messages

By Etan Horowitz
The Orlando Sentinel
(MCT)
Have you ever realized after you sent an e-mail that you said something in it you shouldn't have or there was a major typo? You could try to recall the message in Microsoft Outlook, but that rarely seems to work.
A better option might be to defer delivery of your messages by a few minutes so you give yourself a chance to fix any errors or career-ending mistakes. Kudos to thehowtogeek.com for pointing this out.
1. In Outlook, choose "Rules and Alerts" from the "Tools" menu and click on "New Rule."
2. Select "Start from a blank rule," "Check messages after sending" and then click "Next." In this screen, you can set conditions for the messages you want to delay sending. For instance, you might only want to delay sending messages to your boss. To do that, set the appropriate condition and then click "Next." To delay delivery of all your messages, just click "Next."
3. Check the box next to "defer delivery by a number of minutes" and click on the underlined words below to set the number of minutes you want to delay sending your messages. Continue clicking "Next," give your rule a name and then click "Finish."
4. Your rule is now active. The next time you hit Send, your message will be placed in your "Outbox" and will be sent when the specified number of minutes is up. If you notice a mistake, you can go into the message, modify it and hit "Send." You can also delete the message from the Outbox, which will prevent if from being sent (if you do it in time).
5. If you want to turn this rule off, or modify the messages that it applies to, just go back into "Rules and Alerts" in the Tools Menu.
(Etan Horowitz is the technology columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He can be reached at ehorowitz@orlandosentinel.com.)
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