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Dear Boss,
You have got to be the worst boss ever. Not only are you stupid and cheap, you’re ugly too. I don’t care if I have to sleep on the streets, I’m done with this lousy job. That’s right, I quit, effective immediately. Good luck trying to find some other sucker willing to put up with your shenanigans.
Sincerely,
Disgruntled Employee
Corresponding Secretary
I Hate My Boss, Inc.
If you’ve ever been so fed up that you’ve sent a nasty email, only to regret your decision the millisecond after you hit the Send button, you need to get Undo Send for Gmail.
Undo Send is a feature that gives you a cooling off period before your email is actually sent out by Gmail. Undo Send gives you up to 30 seconds to change your mind and take back your email before anyone sees it.
This feature isn’t just for nasty emails. Perhaps you hit Reply All when you meant to reply only to the sender. Or maybe you sent an email claiming to have attached a file, then suddenly realized that you forgot to attach it.
Oops!
Use Undo Send and suddenly the 500 recipients who were about to see that embarrassing email will be none the wiser about your transgression.
How to Enable Undo Send
First, get a Gmail account. This only works on Gmail — sorry if you use any other email service.
Second, open your Gmail account and click on the gear icon in the upper right corner.
Click on Settings in the drop down menu. Then click on Labs in the top menu.
Scroll down to “Undo Send” and click Enable.
Then scroll back up to the top and click Save Changes.
That’s it. You’re done.
Test Undo Send
Yes, you could test to see whether this feature works by sending the above Nasty Gram to your boss, but I suggest sending an email to yourself to try it out first. Write an email to yourself (be nice!) and hit Send.
At the top of the screen an Undo link will appear for a few seconds. Click on the link before it disappears and the email won’t be sent.
Customizing Undo Send
Setting up Undo Send is easy and you don’t have to do anything else. But if you want to customize this feature, you can adjust the amount of time the Undo Send button appears, from 5-30 seconds.
[note]By adjusting the time, you’re telling Gmail how long to wait before it sends your email. [/note]
To adjust the time the Undo link appears after you hit the Send button, click on the Gear icon, then Settings, but this time, click on General, on the left side of the top menu. Scroll down to Undo Send and choose the Undo Send Cancellation period.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Save Changes. You can change this later if you need more or less time.
What Else You Need to Know
Do this now. You know very well that if you don’t do this right now, sure enough you are bound to send out an embarrassing email before you have a chance to enable this feature. Setting up Undo Send only takes about a minute and then you’ll have this feature ready to go, whether you need it or not. That’s peace of mind, free of charge!
Undo Send is temporary. Once the Undo Send button disappears, the email has been sent and you can’t retrieve it. Sorry, but it can’t work miracles.
Bottom Line
Avoid unnecessary embarrassment by enabling Undo Send. You’ll be able to retrieve your emails for a few seconds after you hit Send, perhaps preserving your reputation and your job.
Have you ever sent out an email you instantly regretted sending? Are you brave enough to share with us what happened? Has Undo Send ever saved you from a predicament? Let us know in the Comments section below!
********************
#PhillyETE
Yesterday I attended the 8th Annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference in Philadelphia, hosted by Chariot Solutions. The day was filled with fascinating speakers addressing many key issues in the world of technology.
I attended presentations by marvelous speakers on the topics of The Big Data Revolution, Cross Platform App Development, Diversity in Technology, Going Big with Big Data and App Development in a Regulated Industry. The Conference continues today with more exciting programs.
You can find out more about the Conference at the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise website.
* Frustration image by Sybren A. Stüvel
Hi Carolyn,
That’s definitely an interesting feature. I think I’m hearing about it for the very first time. Though I’m not a big user of Gmail, this is one attractive feature. Thanks for sharing it with us
Hi Enstine, Yes, Gmail Undo Send has saved me some embarrassment from sending out emails without promised attachments. I haven’t had any big gaffes that I’ve prevented though! 😉
I hope the Undo Send helps you at some point too, Enstine!
Hi Carolyn,
Ah…I’m glag I knew this one 🙂
I agree, it does become embarrassing at times when you send mails you feel you shouldn’t have or that needed editing, all of which you tend to realize later. But by that the damage is already done.
I learnt of this feature a few months back and enabled it right away and am sure glad that I can take sometime to make up my mind when I really want to send the email, or if I wish to edit or not send it at all. I’ve been glad many times for having enabled this feature and would strongly recommend it to everyone too.
Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a nice day ahead 🙂
Hi Harleena, Great point. Once you get used to using Undo Send, you kind of wish the rest of life had an Undo button, don’t you? The first time you need Undo Send, you’re awfully glad you enabled it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and recommendation, Harleena!
Hi Carolyn,
I suppose this could be useful. I dont think I have ever sent an email by mistake. I use Gmail, but through Outlook. I must check it, I think I have to turn off some security feature that my antivirus doesn’t like. I am receiving emails, but apparently they don’t send. I have 5 email addresses with different providers and so I’m not too worried. I only seem to send occasional emails now, usually to students.
We have blue sky and sunshine here today, I’m tempted to get my camera out!
Hi Mike, Yes, there are some who never make mistakes so for them, Undo Send isn’t helpful. But for those who err, this feature can be very useful!
If only I was so quick to start feeling regret! I love the feature but my “oh my god, what have I done” feeling doesn’t kick in for quite some time. I would love to see Google extend that feature to 10 minutes.
Hi Chuck, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Excellent suggestion. Sometimes I wish that there was an option to delay sending an email for a few days. 😉
Hi Carolyn,
That’s the great feature in gmail, I’ve been using that and very true it saves us from the embarrassment. After reading the post I changed the time to 30 so that I’ve ample time to undo the things.
Thanks for this great share.
Sapna
Hi Sapna, I’m so glad you’re making great use of Undo Send. Yes, I maxed out the time too. 30 seconds is the best choice, but I wish they had an even longer time available!
Thanks for stopping by to share your thoughts with us. 🙂
Undo has been a friend of mine on many occasions. It cause me to hesitate after I have sent, typically I see last minute typos and spelling mistakes.
My question is this…
Where is the email actually sitting in this state of “limbo?”
Thanks for everything you do Carolyn.
Best
Geoff
Hi Geoff, Yes, Undo Send can quickly become your new Best Friend. All it takes is one time that this cool feature saves you from embarrassment and suddenly you think this feature is the greatest invention ever!
The emails go to Fairy Land where unicorns hold onto the emails for the required time before sending them to their intended destination. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told…
works great! Thanks. I was a victim a few weeks ago of selecting an email address when gmail popped up who they thought I meant. After I hit send I realized my mistake. Fortunately, it wasn’t anything too embarrassing, but this would have been great to have had then. Good insurance 🙂
Hi Kathy, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you could give it a try and that Undo Send will come in handy for you. You’re right, it’s so easy to make a mistake sending an email but with Undo Send, we don’t have to worry about regretting our messages.
Thanks so much for stopping by to share your thoughts with us.
Carolyn,
Wow! I can’t tell you how many times I was too quick to send an e-mail only to discover that it contained one or more glaring typos/grammatical errors. Says it’s my job to write or edit our company’s blog posts, these errors tend to call into question my “competency” with the English-language (a big no-no for us bloggers). Thankfully, after reading your post I have at least 30 seconds to reread my e-mails and saved myself a ship load of embarrassment.
Thank you!
Hi Ken, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, that’s a brilliant way of putting it – this feature gives you 30 seconds to change your mind. Wouldn’t it be great to have that power elsewhere in life? Oh well, at least we can have it with our email messages!
You’re very welcome, Ken. I’m so glad this helped you!
I love you for this! 😉
I have send so many incomplete emails only because I was in a hurry or clicked on send too soon and then I have to send an apology and a follow up email.\
I just activated this! Thank you! 🙂
Hi Hajra, I’m so glad you’re as enthusiastic about this very cool feature as I am! You’re right, so often we’re in a hurry and we send something out without an attachment or we catch a typo right after we send it. Undo Send is so very cool, I am as excited to share it with you as you are to learn about it.
Enjoy having no regrets, Hajra! 🙂
Carolyn – I have used the “Mail Recall” functionality in my outlook many times, and it really is useful, but of course it is also available after the mails have been sent and you want to recall them for whatever reason.
This is interesting that google has incorporated that in gmail as well, and it makes real sense to allow us to customize the time to wait. I do not want to wait more than 30secs for my mails to be delivered 🙂
Nice share.
Hi Praveen, Yes, Outlook does have this feature, but it’s a bit more complex than Gmail Undo Send. Yes, the developer of this feature must agree with you about 30 seconds because that is the maximum time to delay your email being sent.
Hey Carolyn,
I met with these type of situations many times before Gmail came up with this app.
I installed in months ago and it`s excellent.
There are more such excellent apps in Gmail labs.
~@Khajamoin1
Hi Khaja, I’m so glad you’re using Undo Send with success! Yes, I want to cover other Lab features in future articles.
Thanks for stopping by to share your thoughts, Khaja!
Hi, Carolyn!
What a godsend, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom once again! And you are so right about enabling this feature RIGHT NOW, I have done so and set the time to 30 seconds. My “specialty” is sending off mails without the attachment and it can be so embarrassing to follow up with an apology, especially when addressing some prospective employer or customer …
Lovely hangout yesterday and it was great to see you again and sharing our experiences. Tried very hard to focus on our homework ….
Hi Barbara, I’m so glad you will find this useful. Undo Send can get us out of some very tricky situations. No matter how many times we proofread a message, inevitably we only see our typos after we hit send! We can look much more professional with Undo Send as our newly revealed typos can be corrected before anyone else sees them. 🙂
Yes, that Google Plus hangout was wonderful yesterday. Always a pleasure seeing you, Barbara! I had no difficulty completing my homework last night, my brain was in overdrive. 😉
I have to tell you what happened after having installed Undo Send and I am not very proud of it: I DID it again – I forgot the attachment!!! Lesson learnt: do not think that a programme will do the thinking for you … but make good use of the 30 second delay!
Hi Barbara, Yes, this feature won’t prevent your mistakes, but at least it gives you a fighting chance to correct them in time! I hope you were able to catch your mistake within the 30 seconds! 🙂
I can think of many occasions when I would have benefitted from the availability of this feature :-).
Hi Ruth, Yes, now that you know about Undo Send, you will want it in many situations. When I’m not using Gmail, I wish I had this feature. It’s a great reason alone to use Gmail, but we can’t always do that.
The undo option of Gmail is not new but glad to read the post about it. This option helped me many times when I send email to my clients and do mistakes, I easily click on undo. Thanks Carolyn for writing about this! 🙂
Hi Atish, Yes, I often cover tech that has been out for a while. Many people aren’t aware of really cool tech that could be very useful to them.
I’m so glad you have had good experiences with Undo Send. Thanks for sharing that with us, Atish!
Thanks Carolyn.
I have written emails then deleted them so many times when I get all steamed up. This is a Godsend. I must say I’m very careful about pressing that send button, but you just never know when the day will come when I do.
Going over to enable this right after sending this comment to you. Yes…do it now is what we need to do. Otherwise, we will never apply it.
Donna
Hi Donna, Yes, sometimes we can get so very angry that we fire off a Nasty Gram, then instantly regret our rashness. You are very wise to enable this feature right away! You never know when you might need it. 🙂
Hi Carolyn,
Thank you for sharing this feature! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent something and then instantly regretted it for one reason or another. Usually for something like not including my attachment.
I’ve already installed it to gmail!
Stacy
Hi Stacy, Yes, you will absolutely love this feature. The first time you use Undo Send, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your comment with us!
That sounds like an awesome tool Carolyn. Fortunately, I haven’t needed it, but I can think of situations where I should have installed it 🙂
Great share.
Hi Jens, I’m glad you’ve never needed Undo Send, but it couldn’t hurt to enable it even if you never use it. Hey, it’s free so why not? That extra few seconds it takes to send your message may be time you need to retrieve it!
Very cool. I didn’t even know that option even existed. I work with Gmail for work and its a feature I will tell my coworkers especially when they send stuff to customers. Thanks for the tip!
Hi Sonia, Good point. This feature is especially handy for work when a slip up could mean the end of a perfectly good career. No harm in enabling the feature even if you never need to use it! :-bd
Now I’ve never sent an email that I didn’t mean to but when Mom moved over here by me I set her up with gmail and she needed this feature.
She had sent an email to my brother and I don’t know how she did it but she sent it to her entire list. They were very confused and she was very embarrassed so when I go over to her house this evening for dinner I’m setting this up Carolyn. She’s going to want me to thank you right now so thanks for sharing this. I had no idea they had this feature.
Yay!!!
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, Yes, that’s a great example of how Undo Send can be very useful to you. When you accidentally send an email to the wrong person, you can just cancel it with Undo Send!
Undo Send can also be handy for small typos that you don’t see until after you press the Send button. There’s no harm in enabling it so you can have it ready in case you ever need it!
Please tell your dear mother that I am delighted she found this so helpful! Thanks for sharing her story with us, Adrienne! 🙂
Undo send has got to be my favorite Gmail feature. I use this at least once per week, and am so incredibly thankful every time I do. It is worth switching to gmail for this one feature alone!
Hi Samfrank, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I have to agree with you, using other email services can be frustrating after you discover Undo Send.
Thanks for stopping by and offering your insights. 🙂
Carol, I love this! Thank you, in the past I thought you only had 5 seconds, I love having 30 seconds. Sometimes I put in the wrong email address of an email as it auto populates. Google thinks it knows who I want to send to 🙂
This is one I must save in my bookmarks, thank you!
Hi Lisa, You’re so right, 5 seconds just isn’t enough time to realize you made a mistake and click on Undo. 30 seconds is much more realistic. And will we really suffer if all of our emails get sent out 30 seconds after we hit Send? I think not!
Carolyn, thanks for this info. Didn’t even know about this Gmail app until I saw it here. This could be a lifesaver for many people.
Hi Frank, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, Gmail Undo could be a lifesaver, or at least a career saver! Thanks for stopping by to share your thoughts here today.
Hi Carolyn,
This is indeed a great and interesting feature. It’s my first time hearing about it. I will sure enable it immediately. It can save lots of embarrassment. I hope the other email providers such as Yahoo, hotmail and others will create such a great feature as well. My main email is with Yahoo.
Thanks Carolyn for sharing this great feature with all of us and I am glad to visit your blog for the first time and learn something new.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Hi Neamat, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! You’re right, all email services should have this handy option. People who don’t want this could always opt out, but I sure wouldn’t turn it down.
Lets hope Yahoo offers this option soon!
Hi Carolyn,
That’s a really cool feature. I don’t use gmail as my primary account, but I’ll definitely add it to the account I do have. I know we’ve all had a big “gulp” at some point in time when we sent out an email. All carriers should have this feature. Thanks for letting us know this exists. Warmest regards, Lisa
Hi Lisa, You’re so right, this is a very cool feature! Who hasn’t regretted their decision to hit Send at some point?
I agree with you, every email provider should offer this feature as an option. Thanks so much for stopping by to share your thoughts with us!
Hi Carol.
This is a great feature. I don’t use gmail often, but I’m aware of this functionality on other email systems. It’s good to know that it’s also on gmail. Great share and necessary as I know many people use gmail as their main email account.
Thanks,
Barbara
Hi Barbara, Yes, if you have this feature on another email system, then you’re probably already a fan of this function. For those who are on Gmail, they should enable this feature before they need it!
Thanks for stopping by, Barbara!
Hello Mam,
I would say you are a genius. Found a great trick. I have never heard about this trick or Iwould say most of the people have never heard. In my trust I have to submit email regularly but sometimes it may happen some wrong data sent to them. But now no problem, I can control it by your trick.
Thanks for Sharing this awesome trick and I will surely let others to know about this 😀
Hi Ravinder, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Thanks for your kind words. I am happy to share great tech with my readers and this Gmail feature is truly great tech.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to leave a comment, Ravinder.
We have this feature through FirstClass with our school board emails, too, and it comes in very handy. Consider how many times you ask someone a question, then realize that the answer is right under your nose, or that you were asking the wrong person, or at the wrong time. Might have to start using my gmail address more often!
Hi Ida Mae, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Great examples of ways that Gmail Undo Send can be helpful. You’re right, that has happened to me before, that I asked a question, only to realize I could find the answer myself after I hit Send.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your insights with us, Ida Mae!
Hi Carolyn
I have a gmail account, but use my Yahoo most of the time. When I was working with an employer they used Internet Explorer. If you sent an email out and the people had not opened it yet you could go back and retrieve it (even hours later). Don’t know if that was just within the company or not. It would show there in your mail but when you went to open it, there would be nothing there and then it would vanish from your inbox.
Mary
Hi Mary, That employer could perhaps have been using Outlook. I always wondered what people thought when they saw an email in their inbox but then it disappeared. It’s almost like admitting a major mistake. I was always reluctant to take advantage of that feature, though I suppose if the error were great enough I would have retrieved the email!
Thanks for sharing your comment with us, Mary!
Finally! A free email provider offering Undo Send!
Sounds like a great feature.
Now, if Yahoo! email would offer the same thing!
Hi Ron, I agree with you. The sooner Yahoo offers this feature the better! :-bd
This undo mode is great. I’ll start using my gmail account more often, mainly for delicate issues. Many times I regreted sending a message with no coming back. Wonderful tip!
Hi Felipe, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, we can have more confidence sending our emails when we know we have some time to retrieve them.
This is a great tip Carolyn. Thanks for sharing it. I don’t use Gmail much but this is good to know and I’ll certainly pass this on.
Hi Sherryl, Yes, this feature is good to know about even for those who don’t use Gmail. If you find yourself needing this feature often, then Gmail might be a good choice for an email provider.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts, Sherryl!
this lab feature has been my life saver many times. thanks google!
Hi Madras, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, this really is an incredibly handy feature. I wonder how many jobs this feature has saved!
Wow, this can be really useful for avoiding sending out e-mails with embarrasing typos or that were unfinished. I also sometimes forget to attach the proper files! Thanks for this, Carolyn.
Hi Luis, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, Gmail Undo Send can be a big help when you quickly realize that what you just sent out isn’t your best work. Whether it’s a typo, a forgotten attachment or a message written in anger, you don’t have to live with your mistakes anymore.
I did not know of this undo feature of gmail before your article.I have had this problem of sending wrong email but did not know how to reverse it…Your article was really helpful….
Hi Karnal, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m so glad this article was helpful to you. Thanks so much for taking the time to let us know.