How to delay sending an email in Outlook

Wondering how to delay sending an email in Outlook? It’s easy. I’ll show you how to do it in the classic Outlook, the new Outlook for Windows and the mobile Outlook versions.

How to delay sending an email in Outlook

Here’s how to delay sending an email in various Outlook versions:

New Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac & Outlook on the web

Applies to the new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac and Outlook on the web. Screenshots below are from the new Outlook for Windows, but differences between other Outlook “flavors” are minimal.

To schedule sending an email for later, follow those quick steps:

1. After you compose your email, click the arrow next to the Send button and then click Schedule send.

2. The Schedule send pop-up window will open, allowing you to select when you want your email to be sent. If you’ve recently scheduled emails, there will be an additional “Last chosen time” option available. To choose a specific date, other than the proposed ones, click Custom time.

3. Use the date picker (a pretty standard one) and click Send to schedule your email.

Outlook for Windows (classic)

In the classic Outlook for Windows, the delay option is a bit more hidden. Still, it only takes two steps to find it:

1. After you compose your email, go to Options > Delay Delivery.

2. Select the checkbox next to the Do not deliver before setting and choose a specific date:

3. Click Close – no worries, your setting will be saved.

That’s how you delay sending a single email. But you can also create an Outlook (inbox) rule that lets you delay all or chosen emails by a specific number of minutes.

The action is called defer delivery by a number of minutes:

Learn more about inbox rules

Outlook for Android & Outlook for iOS

Scheduling an email in mobile versions of Outlook is a simple task:

1. After you compose your email, tap the Schedule Send icon (see the screenshot below). You can either choose one of the proposed dates, or tap Choose a time to access the date picker:

2. After you choose the date, click SCHEDULE and… that’s it.

What happens after you delay an email

After you delay sending an email in Outlook, its delivery is scheduled. Depending on the Outlook version, the email is saved to:

• The Drafts folder (new Outlook; mobile Outlook) or
• The Outbox folder (classic Outlook).

The difference might seem minor, but it is significant. In the Drafts folder, you will see a clear message as to when the email will be sent. If you close the mailbox, the email remains scheduled for this time.

The classic Outlook’s Outbox folder works quite differently. The scheduled date is visible only after you open the email and go to its delay options (as I’ve shown here). And if you try to close Outlook while having emails in Outbox, you’ll receive a notification stating that your emails will not be sent until the next time you open Outlook (or possibly later, depending on the scheduled date):

How to cancel sending a delayed email

No matter which Outlook version you use, the easiest way to prevent sending a scheduled email is to delete it. Either from Outbox or Drafts. There, it’s done.

One more thing you should be aware of if you’re deleting an email from Drafts in e.g. Outlook on the web. When you look at the scheduled email in the Deleted Items folder, it will include the “scheduled” note. Despite this note, the email will not be delivered on the specified date (at least it didn’t when I tested it).

Why delay sending an email

There are quite a lot of reasons why you might want to delay sending an email. Below is a short list of the most common ones.

A window to unsend

If you delay sending an email, you get a chance to cancel its delivery. Without this delay, you only have the message recall function at your disposal. Message recall is great, but it has some downsides (for starters, it doesn’t work for external recipients). If you delay sending an email, there’s a better chance to take back your words, as if nothing ever happened.

Schedule an announcement

Sometimes, certain news needs to wait before it can see the light of day. You might be waiting for a contest results or some laws to be enforced. If you delay sending an email in Outlook, you make sure that the information you want to communicate doesn’t reach recipients prematurely while keeping your announcement at the ready.

Right to disconnect

Theoretically, delaying sending an email can act as one of the measures taken to enforce the right to disconnect at your company.

But if we’re being honest, message delay is more of a workaround for the right to disconnect. For example, people can still handle their mailboxes outside of office hours, but by changing the delivery date for their emails, it might seem they’ve handled everything within their official working hours.

See also:

How to comply with the right to disconnect in Microsoft 365?