We’re pleased to announce several more updates and improvements to Exchange Online message recall feature.

Since we released the cloud-based Message Recall for Outlook on Windows in April 2023 (see Cloud-based Message Recall in Exchange Online), we’ve continued to work on improvements and enhanced functionality such as support for Outlook on the Web and new Outlook and an improved experience when recalling shared mailbox messages. Today, we’re pleased to announce several more updates and improvements based on customer feedback that are available now to all Exchange Online customers:

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• Optional Recall Notifications for Recipients
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• Maximum Recallable Message Age
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• Support for External Round-trip Routing
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Optional Recall Notifications for Recipients

Previously, when a message was recalled it would be silently deleted from a recipient’s mailbox, sometimes causing user confusion. Recipients who had seen or read the message before it was recalled could be left puzzled about its disappearance. While senders often prefer their recalls to be done discreetly, some recipients felt confused by the silent deletion. To reduce recipient confusion, tenant admins can now enable recall notification emails for recipients when a message is recalled. This feature is disabled by default but can be activated in two modes.

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• For all recalled messages
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• For read recalled messages only
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When enabled, the relevant recipients of recalled messages will get an email notification informing them of the recall. For example:

Admins can configure recall notifications for recipients in the Exchange admin center (under Settings > Mail flow):

Admins can also configure these settings using Exchange Online PowerShell.

The following enables or disables message recall notifications for recipients. Setting this parameter to $True enables notifications, while setting it to $False (default) disables them:

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled [$False | $True]

Once the -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled parameter is set to $True, the following cmdlet allows admins to specify if recall notifications should be sent only for read messages. Setting this parameter to $True enables notifications only for read messages, while $False (default) enables notifications for read and unread messages.

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsReadMessagesOnlyEnabled [$False | $True]

Maximum Recallable Message Age

Previously, messages could be recalled regardless of age. Customers requested the ability to restrict recalling older messages, such as those sent more than 30 days ago. The new Maximum Recallable Message Age setting allows this, with a default of 365 days. Tenant admins can configure it between 5 minutes and 10 years.

This can be done in the Exchange admin center (under Settings > Mail flow):

And it can be done using Exchange Online PowerShell:

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallMaxRecallableAge [DDDD.HH:MM:SS]

When a sender tries to recall a sent message older than what's allowed, the sender will get a notification saying that the message is too old to be recalled.

Support for External Round-trip Routing

By design, Message Recall doesn't support recalling messages sent outside the Exchange Online service boundary. Yet, some admins route their intra-tenant mail (where the sender and the recipients are in the same tenant) out of Exchange Online to a third-party service or on-premises systems for additional processing before routing back into Exchange Online for delivery. Previously, in this scenario, recalls fail.

Today, we're pleased to announce that Message Recall now supports recalling intra-tenant messages that route externally then back into Exchange Online for delivery.

All three updates are now available to Exchange Online tenants. We hope you'll find these enhancements useful, and we look forward to your feedback.

Kevin Shaughnessy

Since we released the cloud-based Message Recall for Outlook on Windows in April 2023 (see Cloud-based Message Recall in Exchange Online), we’ve continued to work on improvements and enhanced functionality such as support for Outlook on the Web and new Outlook and an improved experience when recalling shared mailbox messages. Today, we’re pleased to announce several more updates and improvements based on customer feedback that are available now to all Exchange Online customers:

\n
• Optional Recall Notifications for Recipients
\n
• Maximum Recallable Message Age
\n
• Support for External Round-trip Routing
\n

Optional Recall Notifications for Recipients

Previously, when a message was recalled it would be silently deleted from a recipient’s mailbox, sometimes causing user confusion. Recipients who had seen or read the message before it was recalled could be left puzzled about its disappearance. While senders often prefer their recalls to be done discreetly, some recipients felt confused by the silent deletion. To reduce recipient confusion, tenant admins can now enable recall notification emails for recipients when a message is recalled. This feature is disabled by default but can be activated in two modes.

\n
• For all recalled messages
\n
• For read recalled messages only
\n

When enabled, the relevant recipients of recalled messages will get an email notification informing them of the recall. For example:

Admins can configure recall notifications for recipients in the Exchange admin center (under Settings > Mail flow):

Admins can also configure these settings using Exchange Online PowerShell.

The following enables or disables message recall notifications for recipients. Setting this parameter to $True enables notifications, while setting it to $False (default) disables them:

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled [$False | $True]

Once the -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled parameter is set to $True, the following cmdlet allows admins to specify if recall notifications should be sent only for read messages. Setting this parameter to $True enables notifications only for read messages, while $False (default) enables notifications for read and unread messages.

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsReadMessagesOnlyEnabled [$False | $True]

Maximum Recallable Message Age

Previously, messages could be recalled regardless of age. Customers requested the ability to restrict recalling older messages, such as those sent more than 30 days ago. The new Maximum Recallable Message Age setting allows this, with a default of 365 days. Tenant admins can configure it between 5 minutes and 10 years.

This can be done in the Exchange admin center (under Settings > Mail flow):

And it can be done using Exchange Online PowerShell:

Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallMaxRecallableAge [DDDD.HH:MM:SS]

When a sender tries to recall a sent message older than what's allowed, the sender will get a notification saying that the message is too old to be recalled.

Support for External Round-trip Routing

By design, Message Recall doesn't support recalling messages sent outside the Exchange Online service boundary. Yet, some admins route their intra-tenant mail (where the sender and the recipients are in the same tenant) out of Exchange Online to a third-party service or on-premises systems for additional processing before routing back into Exchange Online for delivery. Previously, in this scenario, recalls fail.

Today, we're pleased to announce that Message Recall now supports recalling intra-tenant messages that route externally then back into Exchange Online for delivery.

All three updates are now available to Exchange Online tenants. We hope you'll find these enhancements useful, and we look forward to your feedback.

Kevin Shaughnessy

We’re pleased to announce several more updates and improvements to Exchange Online message recall feature.

It was noticed that for external recipients, recall alerts are sent to them no matter what your settings.  Looking at ways to prevent Recall alert messages from going to external, I see Transport Rules as the only way from my initial checks.  Apart from the \"Recall\" word in the subject and/or these headers below, does anyone know of a way to stop these from going externally?

Great stuff!!

i will have to back Hoegi71 's statement.

when using a 3rd party connector to send mail to stamp with a signature (in our case Exclaimer) and then sending it back to our tenant, recall is failing in Outlook classic (cached mode; have not tried in online mode, nor in new Outlook).

The very same message that i have tried to recall with Outlook classic  - recalling that in OWA (which is no longer named OWA 😄 ) works like a charm...

We use sensitivity labels and only encrypt on way out of EXO if a label is detected... so to an internal user their Sent Items remains unencrypted with no option to recall... all recalls have to be done via a helpdesk request by an admin in PowerShell. Does this update help at all, or to put it another way, is there anything in the roadmap for this kind of use case, or are we forever stuck in admin only recalls? Thanks! / KevinShaughnessy The_Exchange_Team 

Unfortunately message recall is still only working with Outlook classic in cached mode. 

With online mode the recall is still failing.

Hoegi71 >>the other mailbox receives a message saying that I want to recall that email and the email never gets deleted/recalled.

If the recipient is getting a notification that you want to recall the message, then it's falling back to using the Outlook client recall feature for some reason rather than using the EXO recall. DM me your tenant ID and the sender and recipient addresses and I'll take a look. 

Hoegi71 

Just like we've mentioned in the article devoted to message recall, CodeTwo shouldn't have any negative impact on the message recall feature. But if there's any problem, we'd be happy to help you get it to work. Contact us

@KevinShaughnessy 
thank you for your feedback. But when I try to recall an internal email with Outlook App, the other mailbox receives a message saying that I want to recall that email and the email never gets deleted/recalled.

Mailboxes are all in ExO and are routed through CodeTwo to apply the Signature.

 Thank you

KevinShaughnessy thank you for your reply. We have all user mailboxes in EXO. So it should work. I'm going to 👍 test it today

_Przemek_ >>It works recall in hybrid env? 
Yes, but only for recipients with mailboxes in Exchange Online. So on-prem recallers in the same tenant in a hybrid configuration (over an inbound connector into EXO) can recall messages sent to recipients in EXO, but not the other way around. And it will also work for messages from EXO mailboxes routing round-trip to on-prem first then back to EXO to recipients in the same tenant. 

Hoegi71 >>Round-trip routing also work for Outlook or only for OOTW?

Both. The client is irrelevant here, it's all done on server side.