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Can I stop or 'un-send' an email I sent by mistake?

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Summary: Once you hit that "send" button, there is no way to stop your email from being sent, even if it's to the wrong person.

I wrote an email from my yahoo email account and sent to the wrong email address in Europe. Is it any way that I can retrieve the email I sent from the wrong email address, delete it before the wrong recipient can read my email?

Unfortunately, the news is not good.

The answer is quite simply, "no". Once it's sent, it's sent.

The thing to remember here is that once an email leaves your outbox, you lose all control over it. And I do mean all control over it. You cannot stop it, nor can you change it. You cannot track whether it's been read or not. You cannot tell if it's been forwarded or deleted. You can't even know whether it's been received at all unless you hear from the recipient.

So the moral of the story is simple: make sure you really mean it when you hit "Send".

Related:

Article 409 | Posted August 7, 2004

Recent Comments

WE WISH!!!!!!!!!! Yup, I just sent a nasty email about my professor to my friend in the class BUT I accidentally sent it to my professor!!!! So much for getting an A in his class!!!! : ( I now know how all you feel right now. I felt like a even bigger dumb*** writing an apology note. Stupid technology.

Posted by: Colby at July 8, 2007 01:27 PM

In my office one of my Colleague sent out an eamil to a worng person and ask me to retrive the mail. I said cant, because microsft doesnt have the feature.

Posted by: Baskar at August 6, 2007 07:58 PM

Close to the topic, I spent an hour writing just exactly how I felt about someone (REALLY letting them have it!), then chickened out and went straight to closing the window, rather than cancel. The email was addressed already .... is it possible it was sent anyway, even though I didn't actually click send? The guy in question is not talking to me, though I might just be paranoid :-\

Posted by: Kay at August 8, 2007 05:23 AM

like others, I made this very big mistake few minutes ago. I and my boyfriend is exchanging sweet sexy nothings and I use HOtmail while he used his office add. I incidentally copied in another address from the contacts side toolbar which makes me really really upset.Of course he is worried as it is his work email. the only thing i did is I sent follow up email to the other person, asked for humble request to destroy the email that was unintentionally sent. Im still up waiting for reply as i cant really sleep. Stupid of me!

Posted by: justjoys at October 10, 2007 09:51 AM

Yes, there is a way to get an email back after it's sent. I have found a new web service called YankBack --- Since the rule is no physical addresses, I suggest you google yankback. I use it all the time. Not that I make damaging email mistakes often, but it's handy for the little stuff, like not looking stupid when forgetting to attach something. You can recall or stop the email and just send it again with the attachment in place.

Posted by: Juan Valdez at October 24, 2007 10:48 PM

How can i find out if a hotmail addess to which a message was inadvertently sent is valid? I made a typo and I do not know if the name exists.

Posted by: john Booke at November 10, 2007 05:33 AM

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

To the best of my knowledge, you cannot. If you don't get a bounce back there's
still no way to tell if an address is valid.

Leo


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Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at November 11, 2007 07:16 PM

This is crap how you can not unsend/retrack and email sent from hotmail. Why is it than if I write the email in MS Office Outlook, I can unsend the email which is configured thru my hotmail account? This doesnt make any sense. Can you shed some light on this.

Posted by: Jake at April 24, 2008 07:27 AM

I prepared the final exam for my college students and sent it by mistake to an email whom i dont know his identity!!

Posted by: nina ricci at June 12, 2008 01:35 PM

You could delay sending the message if you use Outlook, not sure how to on a web-mail
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HP052427901033.aspx

Posted by: Sachin S at August 22, 2008 12:19 AM

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