Dear luser:

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

There is no way to un-send email.
Hope it wasn't too damaging.
Have a nice weekend.

Comments

[oddigy.livejournal.com]

hm, apparently AOL let you unsend mails... but only until the recipient read it. haha. no idea if they still do that.

that would be trippy though, staring at your inbox, then just having a mail vanish before your eyes.

[jungessio.livejournal.com]

Unless you use Exchange server (ick) then you can in theory recall your messages sent to other Exchange users on that server...

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

I had one lady ask for the ability to unsend an e-mail. Since we use a POP3 e-mail server I couldn't give it to her.

What I did do though was set Outlook so it wouldn't send messages immediatly. It would wait until the next send/receive operation took place (we set it to once every five minutes) so she'd have time to grab it out of the outbox before it sends.

I guess I could've just gone into each mailbox using vi and deleted her message from their queue but I'm not going to do that every time she screws up. ;-)

[gevauden.livejournal.com]

You can unsend an email sent from AOL but it only works with other AOL members.
You can even unsend it if it's already been opened, but hasn't gone to the 'Read email' box yet. This means someone can send you an email, you can open it and read it, they can unsend it before you close it and when you close it the email will have disappeared.

It's all rather suss if you ask me.

[xdownfornowx.livejournal.com]

you can also unsend mail with First Class. Both sender and receiver need to be on the same server and the receiver needs to not have read it yet.

[xdownfornowx.livejournal.com]

werd? thats great. I know a large tech school that just started using exchange. i should flame the president and see if I can retract it.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

I have to walk people through recalling messages all the time. It's a pain in the ass, because it's not particularly intuitive.

It also doesn't work if they've already read the message.

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

How do people constantly send messages they should then say "Oh shit!"?

What do they do when they're actually in conversation with someone . . .

[jungessio.livejournal.com]

"It also doesn't work if they've already read the message."

Fortunately Microsoft has not yet developed the technology to erase parts of one's memory.