Outlook Tip: How to Avoid Sending Emails by Mistake
Have you ever sent emails by mistake or to the wrong recipients? You can avoid sending emails by mistake by cross checking the mail before sending, but then this is not possible all the time as some mails might have been sent urgently. Here is a simple Outlook tip to avoid sending mails by mistake using rules in Outlook. All you need is to create a new rule for sending emails.
How to create rule in Outlook 2003/2007
1. Go to the Tools menu and Click Rules & Alerts.
2. In the Rules & Alert box, select New Rule button.
3. In the Rules Wizard dialog box, Start from a blank rule. Highlight Check messages after sending. Click Next.
4. Click Next button in the next dialog box.
5. In the next box, select defer delivery by a number of minutes action. In Next Step, click a number of to set the number of minutes that you would like to delay delivery.
6. A pop up dialog box appears asking you to select the number of minutes you would like to delay delivery. I have selected 2 minutes here. Click OK and then Click Next.
7. Next, you can set exceptions to this rule if you need. You can check the appropriate one which suits you.
8. In the final step, give a name to the rule and turn on this rule. Click Finish and Apply. That’s it, next time you send a mail, it will be deferred by 2 minutes. In the meantime, you can cross check the mail and delete it if it was sent accidentally.
If you liked this tip, please give it a Thumbs up. 
Good for outlook users(corporate users??)
@Rajesh,
Indeed this is useful for corporate users.
I thought I was the only one using this trick!. I have it as ‘2 minute rule’
@Vinod,
These simple tricks are not used by many.
You deserve a link for this tip. Will be here shortly. Thanks for this nice trick. Its very important for people like us who use outlook in office
Very important and useful tip many a times emails get sent out by mistake and then I start cursing myself for it.
While sending emails with attachment, many people just shoot the mail, only to realize later that they forgot to attach the desired file.
To avoid it, I have made a practice to write the name of the recipient in the last, after finishing the writing work.
This prevents me to accidentally press SEND. It looks like a common tip, but has really saved me embarrassment many times.
@Ashish,
Glad that you liked the tip.
@Keith,
Indeed this is a simple yet useful tip.
@Silky,
What you have mentioned is also a good way to prevent it.
This is a nice tip, useful for outlook users.
Thanks for tip on how to defer the mail for a few minutes but I would like to get subject checked automatically… If I get a way I would update here
Hey I did it.. Please extend the post for exception rule where you can add “except if the subject contains ‘a’ or ‘e’ or ‘i’ or ‘o’ or ‘u’”
Using this all messages containing one of the vowel would be sent immediately (that means you didn’t forget writing subject) and others would remain in outbox!
@Jalaj,
Nice find. I think we can set lot of conditions using the rules.
Thank you for the tips. I was easier to set it up than what it seems. I hope I can use when I actually nedd it.
Thanks, I needed this.
Altho this is a saver, how about just typing your e-mail and then just send it to the Outbox. It will stay there until you release it for sending. You can read and re-read as often as you wishm and edit it too. This way you don’t have a clock doing a countdown on you.
Hi I find this tip very useful and inovative idea. Great keep shareing most updated ideas like this
Very helpful tip. Allowed me to solve two user questions in one go!
Very useful, been doing it for years. But – in Outlook I can’t find a way to then snet it immediately if I’m just about to shut the computer down. In Eudora I had the same rule but could just hit ’send’ again, and it went. Can anyone help?
Great………! It was very helpful to me as i always make mistakes while sending mails……… Thanks
@Silki
You’re cute. I like this tip too. Want to go out?
I second Jenny’s point. I want to be able to immediately send it by clicking send and receive. I much prefer to have a deferred check (automatically send/receive every 10 minutes) unless I explicitly click send and receive.
One work around is to make an exception when the message is flagged with High Importance, but that’s still kludgey.
Isn’t there an option somewhere to tell Outlook to only send/receive periodically when online?
Great tip.
An alternative, esp. for those of you who want to be able to do an “instant” send & receive, is to turn off automatic send & received (Tools > Send/Receive > Send/Receive Settings). After you press Send for a message, click the Send/Receive button in the Inbox toolbar or just press F9 and off they go. You can then shut down your computer.
This can also be a good time management tool, because it prevents the continuous flow of emails into your Inbox. Instead, you control when you want to receive email by clicking Send/Receive in the toolbar or pressing F9 when you want to. A constant barrage of emails into our Inbox, especially if you tend to work with your Outlook inbox open all the time, can be very distracting.
Nice tip. Useful for corporate people. I am one….
Btw one other thing which i would like to link here if you don’t mind Nirmal.
How to receive twitter messages in MS Outlook