I wrote previously (on work-life balance) that “one manager I know is so serious about work/life balance that he all but forbids his team from sending emails late into the night (sure, there are exceptions to the rule). But he is able to live within the boundaries by responding to mail ofline after the family goes to bed and then sync’ing mail the next morning at the office.”
I admit it: after the kids go to bed, I’ll use Outlook in offline mode and answer a few mails. (I’ve even been known to respond to a few urgent ones that tend to hit my mailbox late on a Sunday night…)
Well, there’s another way to do this if you use Outlook on an Exchange Server: you can delay delivery of an individual message.
To do this in Outlook, while the message is open, click ‘Options’ and under Delivery options, click on the ‘Do not deliver before check box.’ You can then select the delivery date and time you want the mail to be sent. (This tip is also available on Office Online here, but without the lovely graphic.)
According to Office help, you can even set up rules to delay delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after clicking Send. (This is also summarized in the OO article above.)
Not a bad idea for those times I hit ‘send’ in error: no more having to ‘recall and resend’ mail.
More Office Online “Outlook 2003 Help and How-to” is available, including these tips on organizing your emails. Many of these tips also apply to Office 2007.
- Search Folders: The easy way to find and organize your e-mail
- Flag it, file it, find it fast in Outlook
- 4 D’s for managing your inbox
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 top 10 benefits
Tags: microsoft, time management, snarf, work life balance.
Also available at http://tinyurl.com/worklife07