What (if anything) am I supposed to do when I receive a plain-text email recall notification?
I received a plain text email saying:
Bob would like to recall the message, "Bob's message".
(name and subject changed of course!)
I assume that Bob is also using Microsoft Outlook. I am happy to permit the recall, as his message was sent in error. But the e-mail is plain text and has no buttons for me to press to permit or decline the recall.
I had already replied to Bob to tell him he had e-mailed me in error, so he is trying to recall a message I have already read and replied to!
What action, if any, should I take?
2 Answers
This email "recall" feature is not a standard feature of all email clients. It only works if the recipient's mailbox is on a Microsoft Exchange server and they are using the Outlook client. If the recipient is using a different type of mail server (e.g., gmail, or anything else), the recall is literally nothing but a plain text message.
To "permit" the recall, just delete the message from your mailbox. There's literally nothing else you can do. There is no built-in feature to the protocols that make email work (specifically, SMTP) to "undo" a send. Once it's sent, it's sent, and the sender can do absolutely nothing to prevent any recipient from reading the email.
This feature of Outlook is a very desperate and poorly implemented way to give users the illusion that they can do something, when in fact, it only works half the time even if your recipient is using Outlook and Exchange, because most people are insanely curious about the contents of a recalled message, and will probably read it before letting you recall it.
In fact, due to the nature of SMTP, they can do absolutely nothing to prevent anyone with access to the mail server they sent it to, from reading it, storing it, remixing it, reusing it, claiming it as their own, etc. The most they can do is request that you not read the email or that you delete it after reading it, which is all the recall feature tries to do.
So if you want to "comply" with a recall, and you see the recall before you read the message, just delete the message. Otherwise, if you already read the original, delete the message and the recall; and if you really want to be nice, you can let them know in a separate reply that you read their message.
The real solution here is a social one: people need to not be a careless email sender, because there really is no undo for email sending.
1What does a recall do?
A recall will remove the email from your inbox and send an email back to the sender whether this was successful or not.
Should you allow the recall?
Its up to you, but it is nice if you do. The reason is that the other person usually will send a new version of the email with critical errors fixed, or because it was never intended for your eyes. If you are the curious person who wants to know everything, you could say no and read the email. Do note, that if you read the email, the other person will know that you read it, as it will tell them the recall was a failure. Marking the email as unread prior to accepting the recall does not make a difference as this is an exchange feature and exchange has logged that you opened the mail.
So normally you would want to accept the recall and leave the first email untouched.
The action to take
Depending on the version of Outlook either one of the following will happen: - Opening the recall mail will perform the action itself. - The recall mail has 2 buttons with yes and no to make a selection (I believe this was the upto Outlook 2003.)
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