How to avoid accidentally sending a message before you're ready

I feel bad for being so off topic lately, so here's a tip that I use nearly every day in Outlook:

I often spend time carefully crafting an email to an important audience or with content I need to get exactly right/complete, so I want to review it several times. I'm also fairly compulsive in that I like to have the recipients pre-addressed before I start writing it, so that in case I close it and save it to the drafts folder, I can easily see part of the recipient list in the view to help remind me what the mail was about.

I often hit Alt+S by mistake while typing, which could be a very bad thing if the mail gets sent prematurely. I used to address the message, resolve the recipients, and then remove them from the To/Cc field and put them at the top of the body until I was ready to re-copy them into the appropriate fields.

A few years ago I stumbled on a much easier way to satisfy my obsessive compulsive behavior: type the recipients into the to/cc field and then type some junk like 'jaskdlfadsf' into one of those fields as well. If you accidentally hit Alt+S, the message won't send because it can't resolve jaskdlfadsf. Of course, this only works if you don't work with Homer Jaskdlfadsf (and his wife, Deadbeef).

I'm sure this is ah-doy obvious to some, but since I didn't figure this out right away I thought it might help someone else, possibly even someone as compulsive as me. Anyway, time to go wash my hands. :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  PingBack from http://madison.freemedianewstoday.info/whydoesoutlooksaysendingmessage6of6whenthereis1messageintheoutbox.html

• Anonymous
  January 02, 2004
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 02, 2004
  I am often faced with the same dilemma and a few times, I wish I had added some more information after I had pressed 'Send' button. Recall doesnt always work. I came across a solution which is posted here. Not a clean one but saved me a couple of times.
  
  http://desidost.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_desidost_archive.html#106390768696239055
  
  Mind you, that if you are sending important emails they might get stuck in the outbox with above solution.
  
  HTH

• Anonymous
  January 03, 2004
  Actually, those don't work if you're using Exchange, so I can't use it. Also, for 99% of my messages, I like having them go immediately - I only do this for a few messages per day.
  
  Recall is actually a client-side feature and requires the user to have outlook open and idle (not being used), which is why it can be unpredictable. There have been various attempts at defining a server-side recall internet standard but last I checked, none of them panned out.

• Anonymous
  January 03, 2004
  I can't figure out any other way to ask you this unrelated question - so, I'm posting it here :>).
  
  A couple months back you talked about the desktop notification icon - my default email account is an IMAP account. The new messages go to the Inbox folder of the IMAP, so, although Outlook will notify me via the little envelope, it won't use the desktop notification because the mail doesn't go to my "default Inbox." I tried creating a rule to move the mail from the IMAP inbox to my default inbox, but, that didn't seem to work.
  
  Sorry for the misplaced question, but, c'est la vie
  
  Thanks
  brian
  redpantsdvm@fastmail.fm

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  What happened when you created the rule? Did you get an error or did it just fail silently? Also, what exactly does the rule say? I would expect that to work, although I haven't tried it myself (don't have access to an IMAP account right now to test).
  
  Another option (and again I haven't tried this myself so I don't know if it will work :-) might be to create a POP account to the same account as you're accessing via IMAP, and make sure 'leave on server' is checked. Then have a rule that says when messages are received through POP account, permanently delete them. I don't know if this would allow the desktop alert to fire to at least notify you (but it also wouldn't let you click on the alert to open the item since the item would be gone). If it doesn't work, you could just leave those messages in the POP inbox until you get around to deleting them (or write some vba that would run on startup of outlook and delete all items in the inbox older than X days for example).

• Anonymous
  January 05, 2004
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 06, 2004
  Sorry - delayed reply.
  The rule worked fine, it would move the messages to my default inbox and the message would be delted off the IMAP account - however the desktop notification didn't fire.
  
  I actually have a POP account set up that uses the default inbox, however, I've test sent email messages to that account and have not had the desktop notification work when they arrive.
  
  I'm not sure what is going on. I'm just being obsessive compulsive :>). I can live without it.

• Anonymous
  January 06, 2004
  Well, I stumbled accross this.
  In the rules section, you can create a rule that states if mail arrives in a particular account, to display a desktop alert! and it worked! :>)
  
  

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2004
  Variation on the theme... have you every done a reply all and forgotten to take yourself off the To or Cc list before sending? Usually you realize it just after you hit the Send button. I've created an Outgoing Rule that takes any message sent From Me and To Me and put a 5 minute delay on sending. Then I can grab it in the Outbox and fix it.
  
  Reply All Stupidity Rule
  Apply this rule after I send the message
  sent to LeeB@xyz.com
  and with RE in the subject
  defer delivery by 5 minutes.

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2004
  Great idea, it never occurred to me to create a rule to avoid that problem.

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2004
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 06, 2004
  If you don't want mail to send until you're ready, don't put any recipient addresses in until you're done writing and editing the message. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.