The short answer: open the message from Sent Items in its own window, select Recall Message (new Outlook, Outlook on the web) or Recall This Message (classic Outlook), then confirm. A Message Recall Report arrives in your inbox shortly after and tells you whether it worked. It only works when you and every recipient have Microsoft 365 work or school accounts in the same organization. A message to a Gmail address, a customer, or anyone at another company cannot be recalled at all, by any version of Outlook.
Everything below is checked against Microsoft's own documentation as it stood on 22 September 2026: the support article on recalling a message, the Outlook for Mac version, and the Exchange Online admin reference for cloud-based recall. Where the support article and the admin reference disagree, and on one important point they do, we say which one describes how recall works now.
First, check whether recall can work at all
Recall is a feature of Exchange, Microsoft's mail server, not of the Outlook app. The app sends a request, and Exchange goes into the recipient's mailbox and deletes the message. That only happens when Exchange controls both mailboxes. Microsoft's support article puts the conditions plainly:
| Your situation | Can you recall? |
|---|---|
| Work or school Microsoft 365 account, recipient in the same organization | Yes |
| Work or school account, recipient at another company | No |
| Any recipient on Gmail, Yahoo or another provider | No |
| Personal account ending in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com or @msn.com | No, use Undo Send instead |
| The message is protected by Azure Information Protection (classic Outlook) | No |
| The recipient forwarded it automatically to someone inside your organization | Yes, the forwarded copy too |
| The recipient forwarded it automatically outside your organization | No, not the forwarded copy |
The last two rows come from the Exchange Online admin reference, which also says recall "only works within the confines of the organization". If the email that worries you went to a customer, recall will not help, and the section on what to do instead, further down, is the one to read.
How to recall an email in new Outlook for Windows
These are the steps in Microsoft's support article for the new Outlook for Windows:
- Select Sent Items in the folder pane on the left.
- Double-click the message to open it in its own window. Recall is not offered from the reading pane.
- On the ribbon, select Recall Message, then select OK.
- Watch your inbox for a Message Recall Report, and open the link in it to see whether the recall succeeded, is pending, or failed.
To replace the message with a corrected one, send the corrected version once the recall has gone through.
How to recall an email in classic Outlook for Windows
Classic Outlook hides the command a level deeper, and where it sits depends on which ribbon you use. From the same article:
- In the folder pane, choose Sent Items.
- Double-click the message to open it. Selecting it so it shows in the reading pane will not let you recall it.
- With the Classic Ribbon: on the Message tab, in the Move group, select More Move Actions, then Recall This Message. With the Simplified Ribbon: on the Message tab, select More commands (...), point to Actions, then select Recall This Message.
- Choose Delete unread copies of this message, or Delete unread copies and replace with a new message, then select OK.
- If you chose to replace it, write the new message and select Send.
If Recall This Message is not there at all, Microsoft's note is that you probably do not have an Exchange account, or your organization has not made the feature available. No setting on your own computer will add it.
How to recall an email in Outlook on the web
Outlook on the web, the browser version for work and school accounts, works like new Outlook: open Sent Items, double-click the message so it opens in its own window, select Recall Message, then OK, and wait for the recall report. This is the version to use if you are away from your own computer.
How to recall an email in Outlook for Mac
Microsoft's Mac article says recall needs Outlook for Mac 16.94 (Build 25010522) or later, and that it is not supported in legacy Outlook for Mac.
- Select Sent in the folder pane.
- Double-click the message to open it in its own window.
- On the ribbon, select Recall, then OK. You can also Control-click the message and choose Recall from the shortcut menu.
- Watch for the Message Recall Report in your inbox.
If there is no Recall button, it can be added by customizing the toolbar.
Does recall work if they already opened it?
This is the question the two Microsoft sources answer differently, so it is worth being precise.
The support article says recall works only if the recipient "hasn't opened the message yet", and classic Outlook's own options still read Delete unread copies. The Exchange Online admin reference documents the cloud-based recall that Microsoft 365 now runs, and says otherwise. Under it, admins control whether read messages are recalled, the setting's default is equivalent to on, and the reference states directly that the Outlook dialog saying only unread messages are recalled "is no longer accurate".
So in most Microsoft 365 organizations today, a message that has already been opened can still be pulled back, unless an admin has switched that off for the whole organization. What recall cannot do is make someone forget what they read. If the problem is that the wrong person saw something, recall removes the copy, not the knowledge.
How long a recall takes, and how to tell if it worked
The recall report is how you know. Microsoft says it usually arrives in less than 30 seconds, and that if the recall cannot run straight away, because a recipient's mailbox is briefly unavailable for example, Exchange keeps retrying for up to 24 hours before marking it failed. For very large recipient lists the recall itself is still fast, but the report can take up to half an hour to fill in every status.
Until the report says succeeded for a recipient, assume that person can still read the message.
When recall is not an option
For most business email, recall will not apply: the message went to a customer, a supplier or a candidate, and they are not in your organization. The honest options then are these.
- Send a short correction, fast. One line that names the error and gives the right version is almost always better than silence, and better than a long apology.
- If it was the wrong recipient, write to them directly, ask them to delete it, and tell whoever the information belonged to. With personal or financial data, check whether your company has a process for reporting it.
- Do not send a second message that only says "please ignore". It draws attention to the first one and fixes nothing.
Set it up so the next one never leaves
Recall is a repair. The more reliable fix is a delay, so a mistake is caught while it is still in your outbox. Outlook offers three versions.
Undo Send (Outlook.com, new Outlook). For personal accounts, Microsoft's article says Outlook.com can hold each message for up to 30 seconds: go to Settings > Mail > Compose, choose a time under Undo send, and select Save. An Undo prompt then appears after every send for that long.
A delay rule (classic Outlook). Microsoft's delay article describes a rule that holds every message you send for up to 120 minutes: File > Manage Rules & Alerts > New Rule > Apply rule on messages I send, then tick defer delivery by a number of minutes and set the number. Two or three minutes is enough to catch most mistakes without slowing anyone down. The rule runs on your computer, so Outlook has to be open and online for messages to leave.
Schedule send, for one message. In new Outlook and Outlook on the web, select the arrow next to Send and choose Schedule send. In classic Outlook, open Message Options from the Tags group (on the simplified ribbon, Options > More commands) and tick Do not deliver before. Useful for a message you want to reread in the morning.
The same idea, applied to email someone else writes for you
A delay works because it puts a moment between writing and sending, and most mistakes are caught in that moment. It is also the reason we built Sanaf, the AI employee we make, to draft rather than send. When Sanaf works an Outlook inbox, it writes the reply and waits for a person to approve it before anything goes out, because a sent email is one of the things it cannot undo. You can tell it a kind of message may go on its own, and until someone does, nothing leaves without a yes. It is the delay rule above, except the pause lasts until a person has actually read the draft.
If most of your recall emergencies are replies written in a hurry at the end of the day, that is the kind of work worth handing over. The executive assistant job is the one that covers the inbox, and it starts with free credit and no card.