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You’ve just worked a 40 hour day and your brain isn’t functioning at 100%. You’re tired and stressed that the project is behind schedule because of someone not ordering the right part. You write up a quick email and think you’ve got the attachment for the correct order, only to find you forgot the attachment right after you hit the send key.
How about this one; you’ve spent hours setting up a surprise party for your co-worker. You’ve got everyone in the recipient list and click the Send key only to discover in your haste that you included the birthday boy in the list. Yes, a similar situation has happened to me. Don’t you wish you could undo that send?
It is for situations like this that I highly recommend you try the Gmail Labs feature Undo Send. This feature can save you from embarassment, incomplete thoughts, or even a career ending email.
Just turn on Undo Send like you do any other Labs feature under the Settings link and click the “Gmail Labs” feature. Locate “Undo Send”, click enable to the right, scroll to the bottom, and click “Save Changes”.
Now when you send an email, you’ll have an Undo link appear allowing you to grab that message before it gets sent and take you back to the compose screen.
Sadly, the feature cannot pull back an email once it has already been sent, it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the proverbial panic button. For some reason, if you close Gmail or your browser crashes, the message will still get sent.
I have it turned on and used it several times. If I ever put together a top 10 list of Labs features to enable, this one is definitely on that list.
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