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What To Do If You Send A Kamikaze Email
If you keep hitting "Reply All" and sending those 'oh no' emails, you'll be wanting to watch some of this ...
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Move to your sent items, and double click the message to open it. This simple process will typically take several minutes due to your nervous, jittering hand.
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Once it's open, move to Actions and click “Recall This Message”. There are two options here, so just OK the top one.
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Next, hope and prey. There's obviously not much you can do if he's already read it, but while the computer works its cyber-magic and struggles to retrieve your e-filth, now's probably a good time to go and pester your boss and get his eyes off the screen.
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Make up an excuse. Doesn't matter what, really: figures, paperwork, this year's Christmas Party, even if it's only April. Pester him for a good ten-to-fifteen minutes, just to be on the safe side. If you've got absolutely no genuine work to annoy him with, try taking this opportunity to talk about your prospects for getting a raise or a promotion: that almost always works.
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When the whole nasty crisis has been averted, it's perhaps a good idea to set up Outlook so this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
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Go to Tools, and ‘Rules and Alerts', and a little window will open. Here's where you click “New Rule” and select “Start from a Blank Rule”.
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Choose “Check Messages After Sending”, “on this machine only” and then “defer delivery by a number of minutes”. Click the underlined bit where it says “A number of minutes”, and select a good strong number, depending on how long it typically takes you to realise you've done a whoopsie. We here at VideoJug suggest five whole minutes, just to be on the safe side. That means every single email you send will sit around for five minutes, in case of disaster.
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You can make exceptions to this rule, but that's probably not such a top idea, especially if you're the sort of person that accidentally calls your boss a pompous ass directly to his face.
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Bear in mind, however, that recall will only work if you've sent the message to someone with an Exchange Server email account as well, so if that's not what happened you might as well start putting things in boxes now before security come along to throw you onto the street.
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