We all immediately regretted sending the email. If you’re in that location and using Gmail, there’s a small window to undo your mistake, but it only takes a few seconds. Here’s how, these instructions are for Gmail users, but you can also undo emails sent from Outlook. Outlook 30 seconds to recall sent emails.
Have you ever wished there was an undo button for your email? Gmail has offered this experimental feature for the time being. Google has finally officially admitted that most people send emails that they shouldn’t actually send. Gmail has officially added a “cancel send” feature to the web-based version of the service. Previously an experimental feature as part of the Gmail “lab”, this feature allows users to withdraw emails after they have been sent. It works by putting an email on hold for a predefined amount of time and then letting the user know that the email was sent by mistake. In this tutorial, you will learn more about how to ‘unsend’ emails sent from your Gmail account using the unsend feature.
We all immediately regretted sending the email. If you’re in that location and using Gmail, there’s a small window to undo your mistake, but it only takes a few seconds. Here’s how.
These instructions are for Gmail users, but you can also undo emails sent from Outlook. Outlook provides a 30-second window to recall sent emails, so you need to do it quickly.
Also Read: How to Pause Email in Gmail
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Set email cancellation period in Gmail
By default, Gmail only gives you a 5 second window to recall emails after you hit the send button. If it’s too short, you should extend the amount of time that Gmail waits before sending an email. (Emails cannot be retrieved after that.)
Gmail’s unsend feature works differently in that it actually waits for the email to be sent, giving you a certain amount of time to change your mind and prevent the sending. However, Gmail only gives a specific number of seconds to stop emailing, so it should be quick.
Unfortunately, you cannot change this cancellation period in the Gmail app. You need to do this from the Settings menu in Gmail for the web using a Windows 10 PC or Mac.
Just open Gmail in your web browser of choice and click the “Settings gear” icon in the upper right corner above your email list.
From here, click on the “Settings” option.
In the ‘General’ tab of your Gmail settings, you will see an ‘Cancel Send’ option with a default cancellation period of 5 seconds. You can change it to 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds from the drop down menu.
After changing the cancellation period, click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the menu.
The cancellation period you choose applies to your entire Google Account, so it applies to emails sent from the web to Gmail as well as emails sent from the Gmail app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device.
How to retrieve emails from Gmail on the web
In order to recall emails sent by Gmail, you must do so within the cancellation period applicable to your account. This period starts from the moment you press the “Send” button.
To recall an email, hit the “Undo” button that appears in the “Sent Messages” popup that appears in the lower left corner of the Gmail window on the web.
This is your only chance to remember your email. If you miss an email or click the “X” button to close the popup, you won’t be able to remember it.
After the cancellation period, the “Cancel” button disappears and the email is sent to the recipient’s mail server where it can no longer be retrieved.
How to cancel an email sent by Gmail?
- Click the Compose button in the upper left corner of the Gmail account page.
- Compose your message and then click the Send button.
- At the top of the screen, you will see a message saying: “Message has been sent. Undo. View messages.”
- Click the undo link to prevent the message from being sent.
- Gmail will stop sending the message, change it and then show the message if you want to resend it. If not, simply close the message and it will be moved to the Drafts folder where you can archive or delete the message.
The unsend feature is a convenient way to ensure that bad emails aren’t sent to the wrong people. People using the current Labs version of ‘Cancel Send’ will have the setting enabled by default on startup.
We hope that this tutorial will definitely help you to ‘unsend’ emails sent from your Gmail account within a certain amount of time using Gmail’s undo feature. If you have any doubts, comment below.
How to retrieve emails from Gmail on your mobile device
The email recall process is similar to using the Gmail app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. When you send an email from your Google email client, a black pop-up box will appear at the bottom of the screen to let you know that the email has been sent.
An “Undo” button will appear on the right side of this popup. To stop sending emails, press this button within the cancellation period.
Hit “undo” to recall the email and return to the app’s “compose” draft screen. You can then change the email, save it as a draft, or delete it entirely.
