Tag: Outlook

No Response

A few times a day I get email that asks for a response receipt, and it’s usually from someone I’ve never heard of, asking for help with an Excel problem. Don’t these people trust the Internet? Are they the same people who used to call to see if you got the fax they had just sent?

I always click No to the requests, because it’s nobody’s business what I’m receiving or reading. Today, I finally got annoyed enough to find out how to turn these requests off, once and for all. Annoyance>Inertia=Action.

Turn Off Response Receipt Requests

After poking around in Outlook 2003 for a couple of minutes, and clicking quite a few buttons, here’s how I did it.

  • In Outlook, click on the Tools menu, and click Options.
  • On the Preferences tab, in the E-mail section, click the E-mail Options button.


  • Under Message handling, click the Tracking Options button.

  • In the bottom section, click on Never send a response, then click OK.

  • Close all the dialog boxes, to return to Outlook.

So, if you send me an email, please don’t be concerned if you don’t receive a response receipt. Just assume that I got your email, and I’m busy writing a reply. 😉

Delay Sending Outlook Messages

You hit Send, then realize you forgot the attachment. Or you misspelled the recipient’s name. Or you used Reply All, when you only wanted the message to go to one person. None of these things have ever happened to me (well hardly ever), but you might have been less fortunate.

All kinds of tragedies can strike in that ohnosecond, just after you fire off an email. As a bit of insurance, you can change a setting in Outlook, so messages are delayed a set number of minutes.

Then, if you realize you didn’t want to include everyone in the lottery ticket email, you’ll have time to delete a name or two from the Send To list.

There are instructions for changing this setting on the Microsoft website. It will only take you a couple of minutes to make the change, and that investment will pay for itself the first time you can correct an error before an email is sent.

Update (2008-Sep-19): JP has written an article describing how to delay Outlook messages with programming.