In one of my recent tips I showed how to schedule an email to be posted at a different time and date to when you wrote it. Here I will explain how to see all those emails that you which to defer so that you can keep a track of them as to when and what time you want them to be posted. It’s all well and good creating a schedule but you can’t remember everything and reverting to writing it down on a piece of paper defeats the object of electronic post. Hey there’s a thought shall we go back to paper postage and asking someone to post it for us when we are not in the office to do that. I think not!
I have set up some example emails that I wish to defer the posting of to sometime in the future. Here is what I can see at the moment in Outlook’s Inbox window.
The column headings are there to help see who the email is from, what the subject matter is and when you received it, along with a few more items that are useful too. There are MANY more that you could chose to have visible here.
How to set column headings.
From the View Tab select the View Settings Tool.
This dialog box appears.
The first button refers to the columns which we are seeking to configure.
- Select it and this dialog box appears.
On the left side of this box you can see that the items are from a “frequently-used fields” list. Change this to “All Mail fields” or “All Post Fields”. It might be very interesting to review both for any other columns you may require.
Listed alphabetically you can quickly locate and select “Defer Until” from this list.
- Select Add button in the centre which places this item at the bottom of the list on the right.
- Use the Move Up button, OR select the item and drag it to the position you feel best suits you. I have placed mine at the very top.
- When you select the OK button twice, this is what you will see in your Inbox window.
You are, remember, looking in the sent folder. You will see all emails that have been SENT, and which have been delayed. To see any that you have set up to be sent in the future you need to look in the Outbox folder, (not one we are used to using if we don’t work offline).
Example of the sent emails.
Example of the outbox.
The good thing about this feature is that the recipient will not see that you have created and set this email up in advance of sending it.
When you shut your machine down you will get this message from Microsoft.
Please think if it will interfere with the messages you wish to delay sending.
Now you can set up and review and keep account of the emails you which to send at particular dates and times. Have fun!