How To Recall Already Sent Email In Microsoft Outlook

How often it happens to you after sending a email to office colleagues you realize that you forgot to enclose attachment with mail? Probably many number of times. If you use Microsoft Outlook as the email client at your office, then this tip should be a huge relief. Microsoft Outlook allows you to recall already sent email and includes an option to replace the delivered email and delete it with a updated version provided the recipient has not already read your email.

Here is how you can recall / cancel / delete sent email:

1. Click on “Sent Items” in the left pane of the Microsoft Outlook.

2. Double-click and open the email that you want to recall.

3. Click “Actions”–> “Recall This Message…”.

4. In the following pop-up, you have two options for recalling the email. You can choose “Delete unread copies of this message” or “Delete unread copies and replace with a new message”.

Check the box “Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient” if you want to want to get messages if recall is successful or not. Recall will be unsuccessful if the recipient(s) has already opened your message.

Then click “OK” to initiate recalling process.

For example, we have sent a email with subject line as “Test” and then immediately “Recalled” the message.

At the recipient mailbox, you can see two messages as shown in screen-shot below. The latest one is the recalled email.

When the recipient clicks on the latest mail, Microsoft Outlook automatically deletes both the emails in a glimpse and throws out message as shown in screen-shot below:

Enjoy!