And God Invented Delay Delivery… or Was It Bill Gates?Business Tools Blog

And God Invented Delay Delivery… or Was It Bill Gates?

Tips from Samantha Samsel

I LOVE Delay Delivery. I use it a TON within my Outlook email, but most people don’t know it. This is the BEAUTY of this tool!

I can draft a message and determine when it will be sent to my recipient(s). Oft times I don’t want to send non-urgent messages after-hours and Delay Delivery means I won’t be interrupting folks unnecessarily. (When your blackberry buzzes at 3am, I am not responsible) And heck, sometimes I just don’t want folks to know I’m online! If it’s after-hours or a weekend, that can mean I might get pulled into several exchanges I may not have time for (or want to make time for).

Since many of us live in a world of insane Blackberry vibrations, wouldn’t it be great if everyone started using this incredible tool?? Wouldn’t it be awesome to look at messages that actually need your attention at that moment as opposed to TONS that don’t (during what’s supposed to be downtime)? I know you can Delay Delivery on your Blackberry as well by saving the message (as opposed to sending it), but this poses more of a hassle for me as it means later I will have to go in and MANUALLY send the message, whereas Outlook sends it out at the time you specify after creating it. I just can’t say enough about this incredible tool! Now for those of you thinking OMG this is going to take me 7 extra seconds after I have completed the email… RELAX. Really. It’s just 7 extra seconds after all.

Delay the delivery of a single message

1. In the message, on the Options tab, in the More Options group, click Delay Delivery.

2. Click Message Options.

3. Under Delivery options, select the Do not deliver before check box, and then click the delivery date and time that you want.

After you click Send, the message remains in the Outbox folder until the delivery time.

If you don’t have Microsoft 2007, you can still delay messages:

On the Tools menu, click Rules Wizard, and then click New
In the Which type of rule do you want to create list, click Check messages after sending, and then click Next
Click Next to have this rule apply to all messages, or, if you want to limit the messages that the rule applies to, in the Which condition(s) do you want to check list, select any options you want
In the What do you want to do with the message list, select defer delivery by a number of minutes. (Delivery can be delayed up to two hours)
In the Rule Description box, click the underlined phrase, a number of, and in the Defer delivery by box, enter the number of minutes you want messages held before sending
Click OK, and then click Next
Select any exceptions, and then click Next
In the Please specify a name for this rule box, type a name for the rule, and then click Finish

Next up: Phantom vibrations and proof the Blackberry is NOT a limb.

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This entry was written by Sandi Mays and posted on November 10, 2008 at 12:40 am and filed under Outlook, The Samsels. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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4 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

The method you describe for Outlook 2007 is a slightly different feature than the one you described for other versions.

In the Outlook 2007 example, you are delaying a single message.
In the other versions example, you are delaying every single message.

If you want to delay a single message in other versions it very similar to the Outlook 2007 example:

If Word is your email editor:
*Open a new message
*Click the options button
*check the box “Do Not Deliver Before” and choose a date and time.

If Outlook is your email editor:
*Open your email message and type out your content
*Go to the view menu and select options
*check the box “Do Not Deliver Before” and choose a date and time.

1. Edwin on May 14th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I can wait to get it! Try not to interrupt my morning show please.

2. SMS on November 10th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Samantha, was this meant for me? You will be getting an email at 8am tomorrow morning that I wrote tonight. See, you can teach an old do new tricks.

3. Dan Caruso on November 10th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Sam - this is a great tip. I’ve also heard that some people use outlook delay to hold email in their outbox for 5 minutes. They use this as a buffer to catch email errors before they are sent.

4. Sandi Mays on November 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am

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