Forum Discussion
Delay sending of emails by use of an "out of hours" facility
This should be simple, but I suspect that Microsoft can't get its head around the idea that not everyone wants to work all of the time.
I'm quite happy to send and receive emails at all hours of the day and night. That's not a good thing, but as long as I don't affect anyone else, it's my own business. Where it affects others is when I send an email outside office hours expecting it to be actioned the next day, and all too often the staff member receiving it feels pressured to respond straight away. So I want all of my emails to only be delivered between 09.00 and 18.00 on a weekday. I don't want to have to remember to create a delay every time I write an email, I just want it embedded in the system. In Portugal, laws are being passed to make it illegal to contact staff outside office hours, so this functionality is either going to be available in Outlook soon, or in another email client, and Microsoft will lose an entire country as clients.
My question is, is there a way of doing this, automatically, and now? I've looked at "offhours", by the way, and it's too cumbersome for me. I couldn't get it to work with my O365 account.
I'm using Microsoft Outlook for Office 365 MSO version 16.0.13801.21004 under Windows 10 Pro.
Thanks all - Tim
8 Replies
Hi EuroguardPCC,
have a look at OffHours for Outlook add-in if you run Outlook for Windows.
If you use OWA, see https://www.ivasoft.com/offhoursjsaddin.shtml
- Thanks, but I've already tried that - it simply created a new calendar with the requisite appointments in it, and continued to let me send from my exchange account 24/7.
- It works for several thousands of users. Email me directly and I'll try to help you to get it working.
Last time I had a customer open a case on this issue, I believe you can do the delay send on a single message. If you want all emails go out at that time, it is a weird formula, but you would have to make a rule to send the email in X number of minutes. OR you can use third party add-on to do this.
I thought I had seen a blog article on this as it's a new feature.
Give me a second while I look this upHere are a few options and goes with the options I said above.
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/514647/outlook-with-a-send-delay-enabled-any-email-in-out.html
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/insights/personal/use/delay-delivery
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/insights/personal/use/mya-notifications
OK, That is all I can come up with right now. Hopefully one works for you.
David_Petree Thanks - the first and third aren't relevant at all when you open them up, but the second one might be. I do seem to have a subscription to "My Analytics", so maybe I can set something up there. It doesn't look hopeful, tbh, but I'll give it a go before I go down the route of adopting the EM mail client or Thunderbird.
