The Microsoft Office Blog

I know you (because I am you): You're hot under the collar and everybody knows that (and sometimes loves that) about you. And yes, you've been known to pop off an e-mail message that is, shall we say, less than diplomatic, and a bit more curt than you'd intended (sometimes — only sometimes).

When you and your victim—I mean recipient—are using Outlook with Exchange Server, you have a couple of options:

1. If your unsuspecting recipients have not yet read this "oops" message, you can delete, or recall it. Again, this only works if they haven't already read the message.
2. You can recall the original message and replace it with a more, shall we say, gentle one.

That being said...the success or failure of a recall depends entirely on the settings the recipients have in Outlook. Oh, and if you're not using Exchange, you're pretty much out of luck with the recall thing. But I can offer some...behavioral tips on how to work around this. To learn about that, as well as how and when to recall a message (also why it sometimes won't work no matter what), read my column on Office online.

— Crabby