Email certainly has made life a lot easier by letting us quickly communicate with each other all day long without having to be constantly by our phones. The only downside has been when ever we hit the “send” button by mistake and your boss ends up with half an email of unedited gibberish from you.
Google have heard our cries of despair and have introduced a new “Undo Send” feature for when that email containing those photos down at the pub goes to the wrong “Matt” in your address list.
The sent mail confirmation message on GMail now includes an “Undo” link which, if you click on it, will bring back a message to its draft form.
GMail does this by storing your message for five seconds before actually sending it, so you do still have to be quick to realise that you’ve made a hideous mistake.
Unfortunately if your reaction time is a bit slow, or you wake up in the middle of the night with the realisation that your email didn’t include a very important piece of information, you won’t be able to recall a message that’s already been sent.
Still, this is a pretty important improvement in the email world. Hopefully it won’t take too long for other providers to catch up on providing a similar face-saving feature.
Source: The Vine
3 thoughts on “GMail Provides Undo Feature for Mistake Emails”
This is a fantastic feature, I have needed this so often in the past.
I find that I’m constantly rushing to get through my mails, sometimes I’ve actually sent an email which wasn’t completed but there has also been times where I have hit return and the emails been sent.
I think we’ve all done it ;)
Five seconds? Not enough, especially when i think they could work on this a bit more.
Although different, on certain Message Boards, you’re able to retract a Private Message, as long as it has not been read. Also, there’s technology that enables you to be able to actually delete a text message that you have sent to someone’s mobile phone, after it has been read. A feature which allows you to delete a message (without a time limit) and so long as it has not been read would be much much better, don’t you think?
I’m surprised too at the short 5 second time frame given to retract an email. It only makes this function useful if you accidentally hit the send button by mistake, which you’d realise instantly. It wouldn’t necessarily be effective for all those numerous other times that you need to retract an email.
Good point with the PM and SMS retract functions.