Summary: Have you clicked the “send mail” option in Outlook before completing the mail? Sent a wrong mail to the wrong person using Outlook and want to pull it back? Want to re-edit the sent mail in Outlook? Then this article is the right place, find out how you can undo the sent email in Outlook.
On the whole, the answer is yes!. The mail sent through the Microsoft Outlook application can be reverted back or re-edited on one condition.
If you opt for a mail recall in Outlook, the mail on the receiver end should not be opened or viewed in other words the mail has to be unread. There are several prerequisites for this.
The option to perform this mail recall action is available in Outlook itself. A detailed explanation of withdrawing sent Outlook mail is provided here. Before that some necessary conditions have to be satisfied they are as follows.
- To deploy this action in Outlook the MS Outlook application has to be configured with Microsoft Exchange server 2000 or Exchange Server 2003 or 2007.
- Both the sender and receiver must use an Exchange Account for sending and receiving mails.
- The receiver of the mail should not view the mail or the mail should be unread
- Cannot withdraw emails that are viewed and marked as unread.
- Cannot withdraw Outlook mails that are used by any third-party application on the receiver's end.
How to withdraw email in Outlook?
If an Outlook scenario satisfies all the fore-mentioned criteria then the mails sent through Outlook can be withdrawn without effort. Consider that you have hit the “Send Mail” option before completing the mail and mail is also sent successfully. In that case, try the steps provided here.
- Go to “Sent Items” in the left pane or by using Mail >> Sent Items in the Navigation pane
- Open the mail that was sent by mistake by double-clicking on it
- In the main window choose Actions >> Recall This Message… or Other Actions >> Recall This Message…
- A window with 3 options will be displayed as in the figure.
Delete unread copies of this message:
Select delete unread copies, this option will delete the mail in the exchange server before the receiver opens the mail or read the mail in the inbox and there won’t be any impacts of the mail will be left in the receiver's Exchange Server.
Delete unread copies and replace with a new message:
This option is similar to the first one. The only difference here the user will be allowed to replace the old message with a new or edited message.
By check boxing, the “Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient” option will notify the user that the requested withdrawal of Outlook mail is successful or not.
By satisfying these approaches you can easily withdraw email in Outlook. But you need to take some necessary precautions listed below:
Precaution:
There are some add-ons are available to do this process in Outlook. The main reason for not recommending these add-ons is that sometimes they act weird and may corrupt the Outlook PST file resulting in a completely inactive Outlook.
Only a perfect PST repair tool like Remo Repair Outlook PST can repair the damaged PST at times. In addition, this application also assists users to recover Outlook profiles after deletion due to virus attacks, etc. Download and Try the Remo PST Repair tool.