Recall Message
Recall Email Message in Outlook 2016
Posted on July 15, 2018 by Mitch Bartlett Leave a Comment
Recall your email message in Microsoft Outlook 2016 if you have sent out a message that you would like to have a second chance at sending. Perform these steps as quickly as possible after the email message has been sent to ensure best results.
This option will only work for recipients who are using Outlook or other compatible email client. The recall is only available on Windows clients. Outlook 2016 for Mac does not support a recall option.
- Open the “Sent Mail” folder or other folder where your sent items are stored.
- Open the message (double-click to open in a new window).
- Select the “Actions” option in the “Move” section of the “Message” tab.
- Select “Recall This Message…”
- Choose whether to “Delete undread copies of this message” or “Delete undread copies and replace with a new message“. You can also check the “Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for recipient.” box if you wish to receive an email that tells you if the message was recalled or not.
- Select “OK“.
An attempt will then be made to recall the message from each recipient. If the recipient has read the message already, the message will not be recalled. If the recipient has not read the message, it will be recalled.
FAQ
I checked the “Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for recipient.” box and haven’t received confirmation that my message was recalled. How do I know my recall worked?
Sometimes it takes a while for the confirmation to arrive. I’ve found that you sometimes have to wait until the recipient has logged into Outlook again.
Will the recipient know that I have recalled the message?
In some instances, yes. Sometimes the recipient may see a message appear in their Inbox that says there is a recall attempt. This message may be seen even if the message is recalled successfully.
The Actions and Recall options are missing from my Outlook. How do I get it back?
In Outlook 2016, you can customize the items available to you on each tab. So there’s a chance that maybe it got modified before and this option was removed. You can modify this by clicking the “Customize Quick Access” arrow, then selecting “More commands…” at the upper-left portion of the window. From there select “Quick Access Toolbar” to modify the options available. If you want to take the easy way, just select the “Reset” button.
I received a message that says “The attempted operation failed. An object cannot be found” when I tried to recall a message.