Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#21

Post by bls » Fri, Sep 28, 2007, 12:02 AM UTC

falsestprophet wrote: post #10

I have, from time to time, responded to email after stumbling home drunk. It turns out that this not optimal. I think that a plug-in that locked the send function between 10pm and 7am over the weekend would dramatically reduce this danger.

Write yourself a post-it note that says "Don't respond to email when you are drunk" and put it on your monitor (next to your passwords) before you go out.

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#22

Post by daniel-cussen » Fri, Sep 28, 2007, 5:25 AM UTC

AOL used to have "unsend," which allowed you to take a message you sent out of a person's inbox if that person had not yet read it. I thought it was a nice feature.

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#23

Post by tzury » Fri, Sep 28, 2007, 9:08 AM UTC

intellectronica wrote: post #9

Well, you could just discipline yourself to save outgoing emails in your `drafts` folder for a bit and read them again before you actually send them. That's what I do for most emails and it works pretty well for me. I really wouldn't want my email service to delay my emails when I actually click `send` - I sometimes rely on them being sent immediately.

Well, you could just discipline yourself to save outgoing emails in your `drafts` folder for a bit and read them again before you actually send them. That's what I do for most emails and it works pretty well for me. That is a good advise. I'll give it a try. Anyway, one of the reasons which brought me into this post is the fact that I use Gmail, with Gmail, there is a short-cut for 'send' by hitting and then , It happened more than once that I typed this sequence without any intention to send the message and ptooof! the message is gone. I simply wanted a new paragraph but the message has already gone. I am afraid this one has not been proofed by your suggestion.

I couldn't understand what do you mean by delaying messages. I never meant to create a delay but an ability that my server will withdraw the message from the recipient's server if I asked for it and the recipient has not yet been aware of my message, that is, didn't logged in to the server since I sent or something alike .

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#24

Post by yters » Fri, Sep 28, 2007, 9:12 AM UTC

The bulletin board system at my college did this. Quite handy and very missed once I left.

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#25

Post by yters » Fri, Sep 28, 2007, 9:13 AM UTC

irvine_grad wrote: post #18

If you are using outlook, you can set up an outlook rule to automatically delay and sent mail by X amount of minutes. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/microsoft-office/use-outlook-...

The delay function is useful for other things too...

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#26

Post by christefano » Sat, Sep 29, 2007, 4:33 AM UTC

For Thunderbird there are several extensions that may help: BlunderDelay, SendTools and Send Later Extension. I use BlunderDelay.

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#27

Post by michaelneale » Sun, Sep 30, 2007, 12:27 PM UTC

falsestprophet wrote: post #10

I have, from time to time, responded to email after stumbling home drunk. It turns out that this not optimal. I think that a plug-in that locked the send function between 10pm and 7am over the weekend would dramatically reduce this danger.

ebay is not great drunk either.

Re: Ever wanted to withdraw an email you just sent?

#28

Post by skmurphy » Mon, Oct 01, 2007, 12:08 AM UTC

One thing not mentioned is to send it to yourself. That seems to trigger most of the emotional/regret glands associated with the send button, it stores the content of the message verbatim, and you can review it in the morning and really send it if you feel the same way. I also have Eudora configured so that it only sends mail once and hour so that even though I have hit the send button I typically have some time to experience the "l'esprit d'escalier" or "I wish I had said this instead" triggered by the send button.