Bugs in your mail client (and you yourself) can cause messages to be sent unfinished, without attachments, or with tone and content you regret immediatly on clicking send. A simple rule that delays sending of your mail by only one minute can help avoid all these email faux pas.
Here’s how to fix Outlook 2003:
- Tools > Rules and Alerts
- New Rule
- Start from a blank rule.
- Check messages after sending. Next
- Don’t select anything (apply to all messages) Next (accept the prompt)
- Defer delivery to a number of minutes. 1 min is the minimum – should be enough to catch the accidental sends and the ones you immediately regret
 Next - Don’t add any expections. Next
- Name the rule something like “Delay send for 1 minute”. Tick turn on rule.
- Finish.
Initially you may find waiting a minute to see your message leave your outbox stressful. Relax. Remember – you used to have to wait for a courier even for the most urgent messages. If it’s REALY urgent, why are you sending an email. Get on the phone.
An extra tip. Really important messages you are anxious about, you might not want to wait even 1 minute to see them go. So set up an exception to the rule for messages marked as important. Then mark important messages as … well, important.
Just remember why you set this up, and don’t go annoying all your correspondees with hundreds of important messages!