How to recall an Outlook message, and who it can actually reach
How to recall an Outlook message, in new Outlook, classic Outlook and on the web
To recall an Outlook message, first check that recall can reach the people you sent it to, then run it from the version of Outlook you use. The last group covers reading the result and what to do when it fails.
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Check that recall can reach your recipients
Check who you sent it to before you try
Recall works only when you and the recipient both have a Microsoft 365 work or school account in the same organisation. Look at the To, Cc and Bcc lines. Treat every address outside your company as out of reach: the only exception is another Microsoft 365 organisation whose administrator has allowed recalls from yours, and you cannot see that from your side. For those people the fix is a follow-up message.
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Know that a personal Outlook.com account cannot recall
Recall is not available for addresses ending in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com or @msn.com. Once those messages are sent, they have left your control. What those accounts have instead is Undo send, a short delay before sending, covered in step 8.
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Run the recall from your version of Outlook
Recall it in new Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web
Select Sent Items in the left folder pane and double-click the message so it opens in a separate window. On the ribbon, select Recall Message, then OK in the confirmation box. The steps are the same in both versions. A Message Recall Report arrives in your inbox shortly afterwards.
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Recall it in classic Outlook for Windows
Open Sent Items and double-click the message. Selecting it in the reading pane is not enough: the recall command only appears in the message’s own window. With the Classic Ribbon, go to the Message tab, the Move group, More Move Actions, then Recall This Message. With the Simplified Ribbon, select More commands (...) on the Message tab, point to Actions and select Recall This Message.
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Choose delete or replace in classic Outlook
The dialog offers Delete unread copies of this message or Delete unread copies and replace with a new message. Pick replace when the mistake is a wrong figure or a missing attachment, then compose the corrected message and select Send. New Outlook does not offer this choice, so there you send the correction as a separate message.
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Read the result and follow up
Open the Message Recall Report
The report usually arrives in under 30 seconds, with the subject Message Recall Report for message followed by your original subject. Select View Message Recall Report to see, per recipient, whether the recall succeeded, is pending or failed. If a mailbox is temporarily unavailable, Exchange keeps retrying for up to 24 hours before marking the recall as failed.
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Send a short correction to anyone the recall missed
Look through the report for failed entries and anyone outside your organisation, who will not appear as recallable at all. Write to those people directly with the correction. A plain follow-up reaches them; a second recall attempt does not.
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Set up a delay so the next mistake never leaves
In Outlook.com, go to Settings, Mail, Compose, choose a time under Undo send (up to 30 seconds) and select Save. An Undo prompt then appears at the bottom of the message list after each send. In classic Outlook, create a rule with the action defer delivery by a number of minutes, up to 120 minutes, and every message waits in the Outbox first.
A common case: you sent a draft budget to your whole team and one person at the client’s office. Steps 3 or 4 pull it back from your colleagues’ mailboxes, the report in step 6 shows the client as out of reach, and step 7 is a two-line note to that one person.
Checking who received the message first tells you whether recall can help at all, which is why the steps start there rather than at the button.
If it goes wrong
- There is no Recall This Message command
This usually means you do not have an Exchange account, or recall is not available in your organisation. Check that you opened the message in its own window from Sent Items, not in the reading pane.
- The report says the recall failed for some recipients
Recall is attempted per mailbox. Recipients outside your organisation (unless their administrator allows recalls from yours), mailboxes hosted on-premises and mail-enabled public folders are out of reach. Send those recipients a correction.
- The report says the message is too old to recall
Your administrator has set a maximum recallable message age. The default is 365 days and admins can set anything from 5 minutes to 10 years, so a short limit is an organisation choice you cannot override.
- The recall failed on a message that was protected
A message protected by Azure Information Protection cannot be recalled. Follow up by hand.
Why Outlook recall only works inside your organisation
Since 2023, recall in Exchange Online runs in the cloud rather than in the recipient’s copy of Outlook. Outlook sends a recall message to every recipient, a service in Exchange Online intercepts it, and it deletes the original from the recipient’s cloud mailbox. When their email client next syncs, the message is gone.
That design explains the limits. The service can only act on mailboxes it hosts, so it cannot touch a message that went to Gmail or to a mailbox on an on-premises server. By design, for privacy reasons, it also stops at your own organisation’s boundary.
Since July 2026 there is one way across that boundary. With Cross-Tenant Message Recall, an administrator can add other Microsoft 365 organisations to an allow list, and recalls from those organisations then reach their users. It is off by default, and the choice belongs to the receiving side: your own admin cannot switch it on for the companies you write to.
The design also explains why the recipient’s client no longer matters. The older recall ran in Outlook for Windows on the recipient’s side, and by Microsoft’s own figure it succeeded only about half the time.
Recall is a request to your organisation’s mail servers, so it reaches exactly as far as those servers do.
What decides whether an Outlook recall works
| Case | Can it be recalled? |
|---|---|
| Recipient in your organisation, mailbox in Exchange Online | Yes |
| Recipient in another Microsoft 365 organisation | Only if their admin allow-lists yours |
| Recipient on Gmail or another provider | No |
| Recipient in your organisation, mailbox on-premises | No |
| Message already read | Yes, unless an admin disabled it |
| Message moved into another folder or sub-folder | Yes |
| Copy the recipient forwarded by hand or with an inbox rule | No |
| Message protected by Azure Information Protection | No |
| Sent from an Outlook.com or Hotmail address | No |
Read messages are the grey area. Cloud-based recall can remove them, but an administrator can turn that off, and you cannot see which way your organisation is set. Treat an unopened message as the safe case and act quickly either way.
When recall is not the tool you need
A personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or MSN account has no recall at all. Those accounts get Undo send instead, which delays each message by up to 30 seconds so you can cancel it. That only helps before the delay runs out.
Scheduled messages are a different case again. A message you scheduled with Schedule send has not gone yet: it waits in Drafts and you can cancel it there before the send time arrives. The guide to scheduling an Outlook message covers where each version keeps it.
How to tell the recall worked
Read the report rather than your inbox. The signs to look for:
- The Message Recall Report shows succeeded for each recipient in your organisation.
- Entries marked pending are still being retried, for up to 24 hours.
- Nobody in your organisation replies to the original.
Status updates can take up to five minutes for a message with a few hundred recipients. The report does not tell you whether an outside recipient has read the message, because recall never reached them.
Recall less, delay more
Recall is useful inside a company and, unless the other side has opted in, does nothing beyond it. For most mistakes the dependable fix is a short delay before sending, so the message never leaves while you still have doubts.
Set up Undo send or a deferred-delivery rule today, and keep recall for the colleague who has not opened it yet.
Common questions
- Can I recall an Outlook email sent to a Gmail address?
- No. Recall only reaches Microsoft 365 work or school mailboxes, and a Gmail address is not one. Send the Gmail recipient a correction instead.
- Will the recipient know I recalled a message?
- Not by default. Recalled messages are deleted silently unless an administrator turns on recall notifications, which can be set for all recalled messages or only for ones that had been read.
- Can I recall a message the recipient has already read?
- Often, yes. Cloud-based recall can remove read messages too, unless your administrator has turned that off. You cannot see that setting, so an unopened message is still the safe case.
- Can I recall a message from the Outlook phone app?
- Not that we know of. There is no documented recall command in the iOS or Android app. Use new Outlook, classic Outlook or Outlook on the web; Outlook for Mac has its own steps.
Steps performed and confirmed today