What Is Snooze in Outlook?
As useful as your inbox is, it has one fatal flaw: new emails keep coming whether you have time for them or not.
Aware of how annoying it can be to have an unread email that you can’t immediately open just sitting in your inbox, reminding you of your failure to achieve and maintain Inbox Zero, Microsoft gave its users the ability to snooze emails in Outlook back in 2020.
What does the Outlook snooze email feature do? One very useful thing: it makes emails go away until a certain amount of time passes. Then, the snoozed emails automatically reappear in your inbox, ready to be opened. As such, it can help you maintain a clean Outlook inbox—something we all should aspire towards.
💡 Note: The snoozing feature can’t be used to recall an email in Outlook, but there’s a different feature that can be used for this purpose.
How to Snooze Emails in Outlook
There are several different versions of this mail provider across all major platforms (web, mobile, and desktop). In this section, we provide step-by-step instructions for each major platform, making it easy for you to learn how to snooze emails in Outlook.
How to snooze emails in Outlook on the web
To snooze an email on the web, you need to complete the following steps:
- Go to: https://outlook.live.com/
- Log in with your address and password.
- Select your Inbox.
- Right-click any message you want to be snoozed.
- Choose the Snooze option and choose until when you want to postpone the message.
How to snooze emails in Outlook on Android/iOS
It doesn’t take much effort to snooze an email in mobile versions of the provider. Here’s what you need to do:
- Launch the mailbox on your mobile device.
- Open your inbox.
- Long-tap any message you want to postpone. You can tap on multiple emails to postpone them all at once.
- Tap the three vertical dots to open the context menu.
- Choose the Snooze option and choose until when you want to postpone the message.
How to snooze emails in Outlook on desktop
The latest desktop version makes it very easy to use the Outlook snooze email feature:
- Launch the desktop app and open your inbox.
- Right-click any message you want to postpone.
- Choose the Snooze option and choose until when you want to postpone the message.
How to Undo Snooze in Outlook
As useful as the Outlook snooze email feature is, it can also cause you issues. How come? Well, it’s fairly easy to accidentally postpone the wrong message. The good news is that undoing snooze in Outlook is straightforward, and you can follow the three sets of instructions below if you’re not sure what exactly you need to do.
Turn Off Snooze Settings in Outlook on the Web
The web version moves all snoozed emails to the Snoozed folder, so unsnoozing them is as easy as moving them back into the Inbox folder:
- Log in to your account on the web.
- Open the Snoozed folder.
- Select the message you want to unsnooze.
- Move the selected message to the inbox folder.
If you’re not sure how to move an email to a different folder, then we recommend you learn the basics of how to use Outlook.
Turn Off Snooze in Outlook Mobile App
Just like the web version, the mobile version moves all snoozed emails to a dedicated folder. To access this folder and unsnoozed emails from it:
- Launch the app on your mobile device.
- Tap your profile icon.
- Open the Snoozed folder.
- Select the message you want to unsnooze.
- Move the selected email to the inbox folder.
Turn Off Snooze Settings in Outlook Email Client
By now, you probably already suspect that unsnoozing emails in the desktop client involves moving them from the Snoozed folder back to your inbox, and here’s how:
- Launch the desktop client.
- Open the Snoozed folder.
- Select the email you want to unsnooze.
- Move the selected message to the inbox folder.
You can use the desktop client to access non-Outlook inboxes and use its built-in snooze feature as a substitute to, for example, the Gmail snooze feature.
How to View Snoozed Reminders in Outlook
There are several Outlook default snooze time options to choose from, and it takes just one wrong click or tab to pick the wrong one. When that happens, your snoozed email may not return back to your inbox in time for you to read and respond to them.
To avoid this problem, you should regularly view snoozed reminders and other emails, which you can easily do with the following steps:
- Open your account on the web, desktop, or mobile.
- Display available folders.
- Choose the Snooze folder.
If you would like to learn how to snooze Outlook notifications and then display them all later, then we recommend this article, which provides a VBA code snippet that you can use to do just that.
Stop Snoozing and Start Using Clean Email
There’s no doubt that the Outlook snooze email feature is useful, but it should be used sparingly because it’s not a good substitute for proper inbox management.
Instead of relying solely on snoozing, you should learn how to organize emails in Outlook using a smart inbox cleaner like Clean Email.
The app allows you to automate any routine email tasks using its Auto Clean feature, which shines when used in combination with the so-called Smart Folders, which organize your emails into smart email bundles such as Social notifications, Finance, Seasonal Sales, etc.
For example, you can use Auto Clean to move Outlook incoming emails into specific folders automatically in order to reduce the number of emails in your inbox and your need for email snoozing along with them.
Other noteworthy features supported by Clean Email include Read Later. While the app doesn't allow snoozing emails in your inbox, its Read Later feature can be used as an alternative to the Outlook snooze email feature. It lets you hide unimportant emails in the Read Later folder to get back to them later when needed.
The app’s Unbsubscriber feature also makes it easy to get rid of newsletters and promotional emails.
Wondering about what you can do more with your mailbox? Check out our guides on how to create a group in Outlook and how to add Gmail to Outlook.
Outlook Snooze Email Feature - FAQs
Can you snooze emails in Outlook?
Yes, all modern versions across all platforms support the snooze feature, and you don’t even need to change any settings to use it. In fact, the only Outlook snooze settings available are for a custom postponing duration.
Is there a snooze for Outlook 2013?
No, it doesn’t have this feature. You can still manually move emails to a dedicated folder and use VBA code to move them back to your inbox after a certain amount of time, but we don’t recommend this method to inexperienced users.
What happens when you snooze an email in Outlook?
When you snooze an email in Outlook, the message is moved to a dedicated folder. It then stays inside the snooze folder until the selected amount time is reached.
Where are my snoozed emails in Outlook?
Your snoozed Outlook emails can be found inside the Snoozed folder, which is automatically created by this mail provider and used to separate snoozed emails from the rest of your inbox.
How do I change the snooze time on Outlook?
You can change the time by selecting the Choose a time option when snoozing an email.
