How to recall an email in Outlook: new Outlook, classic, web and Mac

Summary. To recall an email in Outlook, open Sent Items, double-click the message, select Recall Message (new Outlook, Outlook on the web), Recall This Message (classic Outlook) or Recall (Mac, Android, iOS), and confirm. Recall only works on Microsoft 365 work or school mail that stays inside Exchange Online: your own organisation or, since a rollout scheduled for mid-August to mid-September 2026, another Microsoft 365 tenant whose admin has allow-listed yours. Gmail, Outlook.com, Hotmail and other outside addresses cannot be recalled. Cloud-based recall deletes the message on the server, can remove read messages unless your admin turns that off, retries for up to 24 hours and emails you a report. Microsoft's Exchange team put the old client-based recall's success rate at roughly 40 to 50 per cent, and the cloud version's above 90 per cent. Admins can cap recall by message age (365 days by default, settable from 5 minutes to 10 years). Outlook for Mac needs version 16.94 or later. For personal accounts the only fix is prevention: Undo Send holds mail for up to 30 seconds in Outlook.com and up to 120 seconds in Outlook for Mac.

About this article. For anyone who has just sent the wrong email, and the Microsoft 365 admins they call next. On 11 November 2026 we checked every step and setting against Microsoft Support articles (updated August and September 2026), Microsoft Learn (updated 25 September 2026) and Exchange Team Blog posts, read through Internet Archive copies. Steps cover new and classic Outlook for Windows (Microsoft 365, Outlook 2016 to 2024), Outlook on the web, Outlook for Mac 16.94 or later, and Outlook for Android and iOS as Microsoft documents them; labels vary by version and tenant settings. General information, not legal advice. Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team.

Will a recall work? Check this first

This table is based on Microsoft's support article and admin page. Mail-enabled public folders can never be recalled.

The Message Recall Report tells you, per recipient, whether the recall succeeded, is pending or failed.

How to recall an email in new Outlook for Windows

1. Select Sent Items in the left folder pane.

1. Double-click the message to open it in its own window.

1. On the ribbon, select Recall Message, then OK.

1. Open the Message Recall Report that arrives in your inbox and follow its link.

If these steps do not match your screen, you are probably on classic Outlook.

How to recall an email in classic Outlook

1. Open the Sent Items folder.

1. Double-click the message. Recall is not offered from the reading pane.

1. With the classic ribbon: Message tab, Move group, More Move Actions, then Recall This Message. With the simplified ribbon: Message tab, More commands (...), point to Actions, then Recall This Message.

1. Choose Delete unread copies of this message or Delete unread copies and replace with a new message, then select OK.

1. If you are replacing it, edit the new message and select Send.

A missing recall command usually means you are not on an Exchange account or your organisation has the feature off. Classic Outlook also cannot recall messages protected by Azure Information Protection. Despite the word unread, cloud recall can remove read copies too unless your admin has turned that off.

How to recall an email in Outlook on the web

1. Sign in to Outlook on the web with your work or school account.

1. Select Sent Items, then double-click the message to open it in a separate window.

1. Select Recall Message on the ribbon, then OK.

1. Open the Message Recall Report when it arrives.

Outlook.com, for personal Microsoft accounts, has no recall.

How to recall an email in Outlook for Mac

Recall needs Outlook for Mac 16.94 (Build 25010522) or later and is not available in legacy Outlook for Mac.

1. Select Sent in the folder pane and double-click the message.

1. Select Recall on the ribbon, then OK. You can also Control-click the message and choose Recall from the shortcut menu.

1. If the button is missing, add it by customising the toolbar.

1. Check the Message Recall Report in your inbox.

How to recall an email on Outlook for Android or iPhone

1. Open the Sent folder and open the message.

1. Tap the three dots (More options) in the top-right corner.

1. Tap Recall.

Outlook then emails you to say whether it worked. Both of you still need Microsoft 365 accounts in the same organisation, and Microsoft says a recall can fail if the message is very old or your IT administrator has turned the feature off.

Reading the Message Recall Report

After a recall, Exchange Online emails you a Message Recall Report. Select View Message Recall Report to open it in a browser, signing in with your mailbox credentials if asked.

• Timing. The support article says the report usually arrives within 30 seconds; the admin page says a few minutes. Status can take up to five minutes for a few hundred recipients, and up to 30 for tens of thousands.

• Retries. If a mailbox is temporarily unavailable, the service retries for up to 24 hours before marking the recall as failed.

• Sender address. Reports come from Office365Reports@microsoft.com, so make sure your filters do not block it.

• Shared, delegated and group sends. Recall from a shared or delegated mailbox can work, but the report needs the owning mailbox's sign-in, so a delegate may not be able to open it. For a message sent on behalf of a distribution list, every member gets the report and none can open it.

Microsoft's pages disagree: what cloud recall really does

Three conflicts matter before you tell anyone the message is gone:

1. Read messages. The support article, updated 19 August 2026, says recall works only if the recipient has not opened the message. The Exchange team says cloud recall removes read messages too, and Microsoft's admin page makes that a tenant setting. Your result depends on your admin.

1. Same organisation only. The support article still says sender and recipient must share an organisation. The Exchange team announced cross-tenant recall on 10 July 2026, scheduled to deploy from mid-August to mid-September 2026, and the Learn page now documents it. It works only where the recipient's tenant has allow-listed the sender's.

1. Outlook on the web. The support article's classic Outlook tab says you cannot recall in Outlook on the web, while its Outlook on the web tab gives the steps. The Learn page lists Outlook on the web among the clients that can recall.

No recall undoes what someone already read in a notification, copied, printed or forwarded outside. Treat it as damage limitation.

Prevention: Undo Send, Schedule send and delayed delivery

Recall is unreliable by design, so a short sending delay is the better habit, and for personal accounts the only one. The table summarises Microsoft's support pages.

Microsoft's recall article also points to an Undo Send delay in new Outlook for Windows, without giving its menu path or maximum; look in your build's mail compose settings. To cancel a scheduled message, open it from Drafts and select Cancel send.

For IT admins: controlling Outlook message recall

Admins manage cloud recall in the Exchange admin console (Settings > Mail flow) or with the Exchange Online PowerShell cmdlet Set-OrganizationConfig:

• -MessageRecallEnabled turns the feature on or off.

• -RecallReadMessagesEnabled controls whether read messages can be recalled.

• -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled (off by default) emails recipients when a message is recalled; -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsReadMessagesOnlyEnabled limits that to read messages.

• -MessageRecallMaxRecallableAge caps message age in DDDD.HH:MM:SS form; the default is 365 days and the range 5 minutes to 10 years.

Use ExchangeOnlineManagement 3.10.1 or later: Microsoft enforces stricter sign-in requirements from 31 March 2027, after which older versions may fail some interactive sign-ins.

For partners and subsidiaries, the receiving tenant runs Set-CrossTenantRecallConfiguration -CrossTenantRecallEnabled $true and adds trusted tenants with -AllowedSenderTenantIds. Until at least one tenant is on that list, no cross-tenant recall happens. The sending tenant's admin can read its tenant ID with Get-ConnectionInformation | fl TenantID.

Other points from Microsoft's admin guidance:

• Verify with message trace. The Recall: message always shows Failed, because Transport drops it after success or after 24 hours. Check the Drop event in Get-MessageTraceDetailV2 for Result:Success. If you automate this, our Microsoft 365 integration guide covers message trace request limits.

• Compliance. For mailboxes on Litigation Hold or In-Place Hold, recalled messages still show up in eDiscovery, and recalls do not appear in mailbox audit logs.

• Third-party gateways. Internal mail routed out to another service and back can be recalled only if the connectors leave the recall headers unmodified.

• Scale. Recall has no set recipient limit, but the status report covers only about 50,000 recipients.

A recalled message that carried personal data may still be a breach; our DPDP Rules checklist sets out India's breach-intimation duties.

How eCorpIT can help

eCorpIT is a Gurugram-based technology organisation, founded in 2021, assessed at CMMI Level 5 and MSME certified, with senior-led engineering teams working across AWS, Microsoft and Google platforms. Our cloud computing services team can review your Exchange Online recall, cross-tenant and connector settings and document them in your admin runbooks. Talk to us at /contact-us/.

Last updated: 11 November 2026.

References

1. How to recall an email in Outlook: Requirements, Limitations & Steps, updated 19 August 2026 — Microsoft Support

1. Cross-Tenant Message Recall in Exchange Online, 10 July 2026, Internet Archive copy of 9 September 2026 — Microsoft Exchange Team Blog

1. Work with cloud-based message recall, updated 25 September 2026 — Microsoft Learn

1. Cloud-based Message Recall in Exchange Online, 16 February 2023, Internet Archive copy of 13 July 2026 — Microsoft Exchange Team Blog

1. Recall an email message in Outlook for Mac, updated 4 August 2026 — Microsoft Support

1. Undo Send in Outlook for Mac, updated 3 August 2026 — Microsoft Support

1. Can I undo / recall a sent email? (Outlook for Android and iOS), updated 22 September 2026 — Microsoft Support

1. Delay or schedule sending email messages in Outlook, updated 19 August 2026 — Microsoft Support

1. Set-OrganizationConfig (ExchangePowerShell), updated 29 October 2026 — Microsoft Learn

1. Action Required: Upgrade ExchangeOnlineManagement PowerShell Module to Version 3.10.1 or Newer, 1 October 2026, read via the blog's RSS feed — Microsoft Exchange Team Blog

1. Get-ConnectionInformation (ExchangePowerShell) — Microsoft Learn

1. Exchange Online Message Recall Updates, 22 August 2024, Internet Archive copy of 16 June 2026 — Microsoft Exchange Team Blog