How to Recall an Email in Gmail

Why To Recall Gmail Emails?

Many of us have sent emails that we wish we hadn’t. A few reasons why you may want to recall an email in Gmail are:

• You’ve made spelling mistakes.
• You have sent the message to the wrong person.
• Realised you’ve forgotten to include important information.
• Accidentally attached the wrong documents!
• You’ve replied incorrectly to the sender’s message because you were in a rush.
• You have accidentally sent an incomplete draft.

Anyway, you're here to learn how to unsend an email in Gmail. So, let’s get started.

Gmail allows you to undo send by showing you a little pop up at the bottom of the screen when you’ve sent a message.

You can choose to view the email or undo it. However, you only have a few seconds to do this. Gmail allows up to 30 seconds to recall a message. You can adjust your cancellation settings within your mail account’s settings.

When your time limit to unsend is up, there’s no going back.

We will go through how to retrieve a sent email in Gmail, and if it’s possible. You will also learn some handy tips and tricks to avoid being in this situation again (hopefully).

How to Recall an Email in Gmail After it Has Been Sent

So, you’ve typed a message, added any attachments, and included all recipients… And now you’ve realised you’ve sent it to the wrong people and included the wrong documents.

Time to try to recall that message!

Your Gmail account will have a default time set to allow you to unsend an email. You can change these settings within your account. After the time is up, you will not be able to unsend your Gmail email.

Here is how to change your cancellation settings:

1. Locate the settings within your Gmail account.
2. Select a cancellation period of 5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 seconds.
3. Test update with a letter to a friend or yourself.

The pop-up message you receive at the bottom of the page when you send an email will disappear after the period you have chosen.

How to Retrieve a Sent Email in Gmail

When you send a message, a pop up will appear at the bottom of your screen. This message will show on the web version of Gmail and your mobile phone.

• When the message sent notification appears at bottom of the screen you will see two options: Undo or View Message.
• Choose Undo!

You can also recall an email in Gmail on your iPhone this way too. Make sure you click undo within the time frame!

You can also edit your cancellation settings within your mobile app. Be sure to set the cancellation period to 30 seconds if you often regret you’ve sent a wrong message.

Having a second mail address with Outlook? Learn how to recall an email in Outlook.

When Un-Sending is Not an Option

So, you’ve already set your cancellation period to the maximum time of 30 seconds, and it isn’t enough!

Or maybe you’ve realised a little too late that you shouldn’t have sent a message for
whatever reason…

If that’s the case, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot you can do.

However, you can prevent your chances of wishing you could unsend a Gmail message by doing the following.

• Type your emails in a word document, or by using Google Docs first. There’s no way you can accidentally send anything without triple-checking it first!
• Take your time. Never be in a rush to reply to a message just in case you’ve misunderstood or forgotten to include something important.
• Get into the habit of proofreading ALL emails you send. This may take up some time but relieves the stress of sending the wrong information.
• You can always send a ‘sorry’ letter and explain what happened. Or simply retype and send the message again and apologise for any human errors!

Want to learn more about Gmail? Check out our other guides on how to use Gmail shortcuts, how to forward multiple emails in Gmail, and how to recover deleted emails from Gmail.

Keep Your Inbox Organised with Clean Email!

Once you’ve figured out how to recall an email, why not learn how to create a cleaner, more organised inbox.

You cannot unsend an email within Clean Email, but you can perform many other tasks to change your emailing life.

The app has many handy features that can assist you with managing your mailbox, saving you time to focus on the more important jobs, and reducing email anxiety!

Some features you will find useful are:

Auto Clean

Auto Clean allows you to create automated rules to remove any manual tasks which take up time.

You can automatically send emails to specific folders of your choice, for example, you can set emails from a sender to go straight into the archive, or trash.

You will be given the option to create an Auto Clean rule when carrying out an email task. Simply follow the instructions within the pop up on the screen.

You can edit, remove, or add new Auto Clean rules by clicking Auto Clean in the left sidebar.

Unsubscriber

Unsubscriber is a great tool for getting rid of all those unwanted mail subscriptions and spammy mailing lists.

All you must do is click one of the three options: Unsubscribe, Read Later, or Keep.

By choosing the Read later option, all emails from these subscriptions will automatically move to their folder for you to view later.

Smart Views

Smart Views is a feature that bundles your emails into their own easily accessible groups.

This allows you to locate and organise emails easier and quicker.

For example, all social media emails will be within the ‘Social Media’ view, and all emails older than 6 month will be within the ‘Emails older than 6 months’ view.

You can then bulk apply actions to emails within these folders to clear your mailbox quicker.

Your privacy and security are important to us here at Clean Email. We never sell or share your personal information with third parties.

Follow our other posts about how to bypass Gmail attachment size limit and what the best alternatives to Inbox by Gmail are.