How to Unsend an Email

Knowing how to unsend an email is something that many people want to learn to avoid problems like sending an email to the wrong person or sending a message with misspelling mistakes or with wrong data. 

Before pressing the send button, it's essential to review the email and guarantee that everything is correct, this will help you a lot. However, if the message was already sent, you don't need to panic. There are ways to unsend an email, how you are going to do that depends on which email server you use. Check out the article to understand more about it.

How to Unsend an Email in Gmail#

When it comes to how unsend an email, if you use Gmail, all you have to do is follow these steps:

1 - Right after you have sent an email, you will see the message "Message sent Undo View Message";

2 - Click on "Undo", and Gmail will stop the message from being sent;

3 - You will see ``Sending undone'' written on the screen.

As you can notice, the path to unsend an email through Gmail is very simple. But, you need to keep in mind that you only can do that after the first few seconds after you have sent it, otherwise, the email will have already been delivered and there isn't a way to erase it from the recipient's mailbox anymore. 

How to Unsend an Email in Outlook#

To be able to unsend an email via Outlook, first, you have to change the settings regarding the time it takes to send an email.

1 - Open the app, and go to "Rules and Alerts";

2 - Click on "New rule";

3 - Click on "Apply rules to the messages I send", and confirm the choice;

4 - Select "Defer delivery by a number of minutes";

5 - You can delay message delivery from 1 to 120 minutes;

6 - Choose how many minutes to delay the email delivery;

7 - Name the rule, click on "Turn on this rule", and "finish". 

Now, every time you want to recall an email, all you have to do is open the email, click on "resend and recall", and select "recall". You will be able to choose between deleting the email from the receiver's box or deleting and replacing it with a new message. Remember, this will only work if the recipient hasn't read the email yet. 

How to Unsend an Email in Yahoo#

Unfortunately, different from Gmail and Outlook, there isn't a way to unsend an email when you use Yahoo. The platform still doesn't offer this feature to its users. Many mail services still don't have this functionality. If this is something you find essential to count on, check out if the email service you wish to use has it before creating a new email account. 

How to Unsend an Email Using the iOS Mail App#

If you use the iOS Mail app on your iMac, iPhone, or iPad, you can unsend an email regardless of the email server. First,  you have to send the email through the Mail app, you will have 10 seconds to cancel the mail delivery. All you have to do is click on "undo send".

Checklist to Review an Email After Sending It#

To prevent any problem with email being sent wrong, follow up this checklist to review every detail of the message before sending it. If you are running an email marketing campaign, a single email can be sent to thousands of people at the same time. It's important to make sure everything is correct, even though you have learned how to unsend an email. 

• Check if the recipient's email addresses are correct;
• Review the subject line;
• Review if the information in the message is correct;
• Read the email out loud to make sure it's written correctly;
• Pay special attention to how to write names.

To Unsend an Email You Need to Be Quick#

As you may have realized in the explanations about how to unsend an email, to be able to complete this task you just have a few seconds. This means, the mistake needs to be perceived quickly, so you have the option to undo the sending. Usually, if the email has been sent one hour ago, for instance, you can't unsend it anymore. It's important to pay attention.