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Message tab- group: Move- Actions- Recall this Message Select your Recall method. Given the high probability that it could fail, it might be best to recall it with a replacement message even when you did not want to send a message in the first place. Recall Email Message in Outlook 2019/2016. 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.
Recall your email message in Microsoft Outlook 2019 or 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.
Your Outlook client is likely broken. Try the steps outlined at this Microsoft Answers post.
I received an interesting message which I wanted to read later so I’ve let it Unread but now it is gone.
I’ve found out that it was recalled by the sender but I don’t think it should have been for reasons I won’t go into here.
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Is there any way I can still get this message back?
Ah, the “Recall This Message” feature… It’s been the topic of many endless corporate discussions about to what extent it is legally allowed to have this feature and how to handle it.
Laws are different in every country so I’ll just stick to a small disclaimer about the feature itself and then show you how you can still get back the recalled message.
Disclaimer: Recall This Message comes without warranty.
The Recall This Message feature isn’t a perfect cover-up and neither was it intended to be.
It is basically just a helpful end-user tool to mask some honest mistakes under the right circumstances. Under the wrong circumstances, it can have the opposite effect as discussed in; Recall a sent message (and why it will probably fail).
In all cases, it leaves a trace!
If you need something that works reliably, there are Exchange level features such as In-Place eDiscovery (Compliance Search) to really clean up a messy situation. This however requires you to talk to your Exchange administrator and/or Compliance Officer as these aren’t end-user features.
Recover the Recalled message
The Recall feature only works within an Exchange environment and even then there are restrictions to whether it will work or not.
In this case, it worked and this is what happened in the background in a simplified representation;
- A special recall message was sent by the sender of the message to find and delete (or replace) the original message in the mailbox of the recipient.
- The original message was found in the mailbox of the recipient and was hard deleted (skips the Deleted Items folder), as well as the special recall message itself.
Under the perfect circumstances, the recipient of the message never noticed that this message was received and neither that is has been deleted shortly thereafter.
However, since the message was (briefly) stored within the mailbox and then hard deleted, it would still show up when using the Recover Deleted Items feature;
- Outlook 2016 / 2019 / Office 365
Select the Deleted Items folder-> use the link at the top; Recover items recently removed from this folder - Outlook 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2016 (msi-install)
tab: Folder-> button: Recover Deleted Items
You’ll now see a dialog with all the Outlook items that have recently been deleted from your mailbox but are still in the Retention Period set for your mailbox. How long this Retention Period is, depends on the chosen settings of your company, but for Office 365 Exchange Online the default is 14 days.
In this dialog, you should see the special Recall message as well as the original message itself. Select the original message, verify that the Restore Selected Items option is selected and press the OK.
The message will be restored either to the Deleted Items folder or the folder that the message was deleted from. Due to synching delays, it may take a minute for it to show up.
Important! Prevent notifying the sender
As you’ve now recovered the message, the recall has actually failed and the sender will receive a Recall Failed notification even when he/she first received the Recall Success notification.
If you don’t want this to happen, select the special Recall message first, select the option “Purge Selected Items” and press OK. You can now recover the original recalled message without notifying the original sender so it will still show that the recall was successful for them.
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