When recall is used, it sends another email message to all the recipients of the original message which says: When I’ve seen this attempted, the cure seems much worse than the disease. The problem is, it’s not implemented (or it simply doesn’t work as intended) in most email programs.
The intent was to provide a semi-standard way to recall, or bring back, a sent message: a way to un-send it. Some email programs and systems offer a function called message recall. “Recall” can actually make the problem worse You might be able to remove the evidence - the message may disappear from their inbox - but even then, they could have copied or printed it before that.Īnd again, this is not, not, NOT available with the email services available on the internet, and not something that would work between different email services even if it was. Hopefully this is obvious, but once they’ve read the message, there’s no way to make them un-read it. In that case, it’s possible that an un-send function will actually remove your message from the inbox of the recipient(s). The recipient has not yet read the email.I mean that both sender and recipient likely work for the same company and use the same email system as provided by that company. I’m not talking about Gmail or Hotmail or whatever here. Both the sender and the recipient must be on the same corporate email system.Some of these email systems have a real, honest-to-goodness un-send option. It’s just most common to see them in large corporations. “Corporate” here is really just a characterization, because of course these email systems may be used elsewhere. An actual exception: some corporate systems Once those seconds have passed, the message is really sent.Īnd once it’s really been sent, it cannot be un-sent.Īll this feature does is give you a few seconds to change your mind. During that time, you can cancel or “undo” the send. When enabled, all this option does is delay sending your message for up to a maximum of 30 seconds. What Gmail calls “Undo Send” should really be called “Delay Send”. Many people point to a feature in Gmail and tell me, “But Gmail lets you undo send!” You can’t even know it’s been received, unless you get some kind of response from the recipient. You cannot tell if it’s been forwarded or deleted. You cannot track whether it’s been read or not. Once an email leaves your outbox, you lose all control over it.
There are two things that are important to realize about that scenario: If the recipient is using a PC-based email program, it is eventually downloaded to the recipient’s machine.The email is placed in the recipient’s online inbox.The email is sent from your email provider to the email provider of your recipient.(If you’re using a web-based email service, like or Gmail, the message is already on their servers.) If you’re using a PC-based email program, like Microsoft Office’s Outlook or Thunderbird, the email is sent from your machine to your email provider.When you hit the Send button, the following happens: While some corporate systems may have the ability, email sent between systems and across the internet simply cannot be un-sent. Gmail’s “undo send” only delays the send for a few seconds so you can change your mind. Once it leaves your outbox, you lose all control over it.