How many times have you sent an email to the wrong person, or changed your mind after hitting the send button.
Don’t you wish you could unsend email? Well here’s something that may help. I’ll show you how to undo an email.
Before you get too excited, this ‘trick’ will not save you in every one of these instances where you have sent an email in error, email to wrong person etc.
This is a hidden feature in Gmail, and I must admit was a surprise to me when I discovered it.
After sending your email, you have 10 seconds to undo it. You will see a prompt (such as below) on your screen:
Strangely enough, this feature is not enabled by default in Gmail , but it’s real easy to do.
- Whilst in Gmail, click on settings in the top right corner (the icon that looks like a cog)
- Select ‘settings’ from the drop down menu
- Click on the ‘labs’ tab (3rd one from the end on the right hand side of the screen)
- Scroll to the bottom of the page where you’ll see “Undo Send” , and click enable
- You’re done! You now know how to undo an email!
Try it out. As I said earlier, once you hit send, you’ll see the undo option, and that appears in the middle of the screen just above your email list. That will only stay there for 10 seconds. From my own experience, when I have sent an email in error, I have realised straight away. So 10 seconds is more than enough time.
Did you about this feature in Gmail? Leave a comment below, and certainly please share if this has actually helped you. It also may be handy to share with your friends who use Gmail so they also know how to undo an email and avoid potential embarassment.