Unsending email in Gmail *after* rereading it. Possible?

October 22, 2017 1:45 PM

I know about and have enabled the "undo send" feature in Gmail that used to be part of Gmail labs. What I can't seem to figure out is if there's a way to use this feature within the 30 second window after I go into Sent Items and click on the email to reread it. That's when I normally spot that one last pesky typos or messed up attachment, but once I do any navigation in Gmail, the "Your message has been sent" notification with the Undo option goes away. Am I missing something?
posted by deludingmyself to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Undo send allows you to stop it from sending right after you hit send from the screen you write your email. So if you're going to be doing any last minute proofreading for an Omg undo moment, that's where you do it, and by clicking the link. If you navigate away from that screen by looking in "sent" you're giving up your opportunity to cancel the send. Another way to think about it is that it just adds a delay between the time you press "send" and before it actually transmits the message.

You can also adjust the amount of time you have to undo the send in settings, but it still must be undone from the write email screen. Don't navigate away!
posted by Karaage at 1:55 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Consider looking into Boomerang where you can delay and schedule emails. If it’s important, you could schedule it to send an hour out and then go get a drink of water, refill your coffee and then proof it again. I also seem to recall a more robust grammar checking add on either with Boomerang or some other service. Boomerang has free and paid options.
posted by amanda at 2:33 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Google Inbox also has an unsend feature. I tested it on a desktop PC and it works a bit differently than stock GMail:

-After hitting send, a small pop up button appears in the lower left hand corner. You have 10 seconds to hit UNDO to unsend your message. There doesn't seem to be any way to increase or decrease the length of time for this. Even if you go back to GMail and change the timer, it doesn't seem to affect Inbox's unsend time.
-You can click on the 'Sent' section and read your message or any other section on the left side of Google Inbox in those 10 seconds and still be able to click UNDO. The only way to prematurely kill the UNDO pop up is to close or reload the tab.
posted by FJT at 2:34 PM on October 22, 2017

There's no reliable way to truly unsend a sent email. The undo send feature in gmail doesn't actually unsend. It fakes undo by delaying sending for 30 seconds (or whatever you have it set to) and then sending it if you don't hit "undo". This is why you can't unsend when you're reading the email later.
posted by caek at 2:40 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

So, the answer to your basic question is no.

But

You shouldn't have to go to sent mail to re-read your email. After you hit send, it should just... be there, exactly the same as if you went into sent email to re-read it. Is that not happening for you? What is your experience after you hit send if you stay on the same page?
posted by brainmouse at 3:14 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ah wait you're composing from desktop in the little "pop-up" thing instead of in its own window (or in a reply window) aren't you. In that case yes, the experience is not the same. However you can keep from navigating away by opening the "view message" dialog in a new window (right click --> open in new window, control+click --> open in a new window, middle click if you're using a civilized machine), and it won't get rid of you "undo send" option.
posted by brainmouse at 3:23 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer:

There's no reliable way to truly unsend a sent email. The undo send feature in gmail doesn't actually unsend. It fakes undo by delaying sending for 30 seconds (or whatever you have it set to) and then sending it if you don't hit "undo". This is why you can't unsend when you're reading the email later.

This is exactly right.

To elaborate on your question, "That's when I normally spot that one last pesky typos or messed up attachment, but once I do any navigation in Gmail, the "Your message has been sent" notification with the Undo option goes away." Correct: as soon as you navigate anywhere, the UI element that allows you to undo send goes away and you can't undo it anymore.
posted by kdar at 4:01 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Alright, guess that answers my question. I knew the emails weren't really sending, and I am indeed composing from desktop in the "pop up" version of Gmail, so the email goes away immediately and Sent Items is the only place to review it. It shows up there immediately when I navigate to it, even if's within the window where it shouldn't have been sent yet because I have the 30 second delay enabled.

My email practices are otherwise fine (I never send important emails without a final readthrough, and I've played around with Boomerang), but I've had a few unimportant emails in a row lately where I spotted that one pesky thing after sending. It wouldn't really bother me if I didn't have a feature enabled that seemed like it should address this exact problem. Ah well.
posted by deludingmyself at 5:58 PM on October 22, 2017

Instead of going and finding what you've written in the sent mail folder, I think the answer is to just preemptively hit the undo button if you have the urge to reread what you've "sent," which, incidentally, automatically brings up the now definitively unsent draft. Fewer clicks, even.
posted by nobody at 6:10 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I make liberal use of the Drafts feature in Gmail. Instead of sending, it's easy to just hit the Back button. Since Gmail autosaves drafts every few seconds, it's easy to do this and then look at the draft before hitting the Send button. Some messages I don't care if there are a few small errors, but others need a re-read, and that's how I handle it.
posted by lhauser at 6:56 PM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]