Did you send an e-mail to the wrong person in Outlook? Save yourself the embarrassment by retracting or resending the e-mail.
The device used for this manual is set in Dutch. The text has been automatically translated. The exact name of settings may differ on your device.
It happens to everyone sometimes: you send an e-mail and only after you hit the send button do you notice that you entered the wrong recipient. Outlook gives you only a minimal amount of time after sending to undo the sending of an e-mail. But fortunately, you can retract the e-mail afterwards.
That will save you an embarrassing follow-up email to the wrong recipient that the previous message was not meant for his or her eyes. You also do the recipient a favor with that. No one likes getting emails in their Outlook mailbox that are irrelevant.
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This feature had been available in the Web and Windows versions of Outlook for a while, but Microsoft is now rolling it out to other platforms. It was Mac’s turn in early February, and now according to the mobile applications for Android and iOS.
Please note that the feature to retract emails is only available for emails sent to other Microsoft domains within the same organization. Thus, you cannot retract an email that you mistakenly send out to an external recipient.
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Revoke e-mail with Outlook (new)
Did you send a wrong e-mail? In just a few clicks you can retract the email. Find the email in the folder Sent messages and double-click to display in a separate window. Now click on the three dots in the top working ribbon.
You now have two options. With Resend message allows you to change the content and recipients and re-send the e-mail. If you choose Retract message, you undo the sending and the message is deleted from the recipient’s mailbox. The message remains in your sent messages folder.
You yourself will receive an e-mail afterwards confirming that the action has been performed. If the e-mail was sent to multiple recipients, it may take a little longer to withdraw it for everyone.
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Email revocation in Outlook (old)
The guide above is based on the new version of Outlook. If you are still using the old version, the procedure is very similar. After double-clicking on the e-mail, click on File and then Info. The two options are identical: either resend the message or retract the e-mail.
In the old Outlook app, you could check whether you wanted to let the addressee(s) know if the email withdrawal was successful. This option is gone in the new Outlook.