Scheduling An Email To Send Later
In this global communication age, being able to schedule an email to send at a later time is a necessity for many people. From not disturbing co-workers in the middle of the night to making sure an email being sent across the world arrives at a time that it will be seen, there are many reasons why email scheduling is needed. Today’s post will explain how to schedule emails in Outlook desktop and web clients. Scheduling An Email To Send Later
Email scheduling is something that a lot of people need regardless of whether they use a dedicated desktop email client or the web application. We are focusing on Outlook in this post because it is the defacto application used by many business and home users.
Scheduling Email Using Outlook Desktop App
For those who use the Outlook desktop client, there is already a built-in feature to schedule emails. The problem is that the scheduling feature isn’t clearly labeled, so you may not even realize you have it.
On the desktop application, Microsoft labeled its email scheduling feature as Outlook Delay Delivery. The following steps are pretty much the same if you are using Outlook 365, Outlook 2016, or Outlook 2013. To schedule an email
- Open the Microsoft Outlook
- Click on the New Email button located on the top left corner of your Outlook ribbon. It will open a new compose email window
- Add the receipt email address(es) to the email, and complete the email, just like you would normally.
- At this point, to schedule the email, click on the Options Tab -> followed by the Delay Delivery button
- In the window that opens, you will see a section for Delivery Options. In that section look for and enter the date and time you want the message delivered next to the line Do not deliver before
- Once you close have entered the info, click the close button on the window. That will take you back to the email you are composing. At this point, just hit send once you finish composing the email. The email will send on whatever date and time you entered in the delayed delivery window.
A couple of things to keep in mind using this feature on the Outlook desktop app
- The email will sit in your Outbox folder until the send date/time
- Your system should be powered on during the time you have scheduled to send the email. The email is physically on your computer, so if the computer is off, it won’t send until you turn it back on.
- The Internet needs to be working on your computer during the time you have scheduled to send. Again, the email is on your computer, if you don’t have internet, how can Outlook send it.
- The send date and time you scheduled is going to use the date and time on your computer. Make sure the date and time on your computer are accurate.
NOTE For Mac Outlook Desktop Users
- Unfortunately, the Mac users who have the Outlook Desktop App. Scheduling email sending is only available if you are using a business (Exchange) email account. If you are accessing your ISP, @outlook, @gmail, or any other provider email via the Outlook Desktop app, you currently can’t schedule email sending.
Scheduling Email Using Outlook On The Web
For those who use Outlook on the web, scheduling email is much easier. Use the following steps to schedule from Outlook on the web.
- Log into Outlook on the web, and start a new email message. Once you have composed your message look at the send button on the bottom You will see a down arrow, just to the right of the send button.
- Click the down arrow and then select send later
- In the window that opens, you can select one of the options shown, or click on Custom Time, to enter your own date and time info for the email to be sent.
- Once you enter the scheduled date and time hit send from this window, and the email will be scheduled to be sent.
A couple of things to keep in mind using this feature on Outlook on the web
- The email is saved on the Outlook web server, not your computer. So your computer DOES NOT need to be on during the scheduled time.
- You don’t need to have internet during the scheduled send time, only Microsoft does, as the email is being sent from their online system.
So this does have advantages compared to the Outlook desktop app.
Scheduling An Email To Send Later
Final Thought
Hopefully, this information will help you not have to wake up in the middle of the night just to send an email.
Scheduling An Email To Send Later
