
Undo Send in Gmail - KevinBongart
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.html
======
sidsavara
It sounds like they've done some research to back up their 5 second logic.

I had my own method of "undo" that I've been using - I simply put GMail in
offline mode when I am batch replying to emails. Then before I send, I do a
quick glance at my outbox. If everything looks good, I go back into online
mode

Before this I was just saving as drafts, but that seemed a little messy.

I do wish this was configurable though. It would be nice if I could set it to
perhaps 10 minutes with some sort of override (e.g., I am on the phone or
chatting with someone right now and I am trying to send them directions or
something). Most of my emails are not _that_ time sensitive anyway.

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bemmu
By the way, is there a feature in Gmail such that it would remind me about an
e-mail if it is not replied to? For example if I ask a client "should the icon
be in cornflower blue?" I'd like to be reminded if they haven't replied to it
in X hours.

~~~
cstejerean
I don't think there is a way to do this automatically, but I've been using the
super stars in GMail for this. I use one of them to mark emails that I'm
waiting for a reply on, so I can follow up with people if I don't hear from
them for a while.

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tlrobinson
5 seconds? Does that really help? How about making it adjustable?

~~~
amichail
If it's being sent to a gmail address, why not allow the user to undo it as
long as the receiver has not looked at it yet?

~~~
briansmith
Privacy. It would become something like a read receipt.

~~~
amichail
You could make it a limited resource. You could only do this say once a month
per recipient.

~~~
jrockway
Why is this modded down to -3? This isn't trolling or spam, this is a
legitimate suggestion.

If you disagree, you need to post a comment, not click the downmod button. HN
is not Digg.

~~~
menloparkbum
Probably because it's such a weird/dumb suggestion it is hard to distinguish
from a troll.

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psranga
Lots of people have pointed out several possible improvements to this feature.
Now if we could anticipate these things with a few minutes of contemplation
(each), I'm sure Google would have come up with the same list of gripes.

But obviously, they did some tradeoff analysis and decided to do what they
did.

Now, from a technical standpoint, the fact that they implemented this feature
in the present way results in _some_ information of their internal
infrastructure and engineering organization to leak through.

The 5 second, non-configurable timeout should allow us to speculate a little
bit on what Gmail's architecture is.

The only reason I can think of is that maybe the undo operation results in a
scan over _all_ queued email for all users. This is obviously an expensive
operation, so maybe they cannot easily increase this delay with their current
architecture. They'll have to add per-user queues on their servers. Maybe
that's too big an engineering project at present.

What do you think?

Microsoft Outlook has had a sophisticated version of this for a long time. I
know a guy who had set up Outlook to send _all_ his email 30 min after he hit
send. You can even schedule a message for sending at an arbitrary time (i.e.,
per-message level granularity of send delay).

For instance, the Microsoft Outlook implementation of this feature essentially
implies that each client can queue up emails for later delivery on the server
and _later_ interrogate this queue in a sophisticated way (i.e., it's not fire
and forget).

~~~
andyn
I suspect it's simply browser side and the send button holds off actually
POSTing the email for five seconds.

~~~
psranga
Probably not. They say that if your browser crashes or you close the browser
immediately after hitting send, the email still gets sent.

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bonaldi
If this was MS they would also add a feature that sends an email when you
cancel one, saying something like "bonaldi tried to recall message x".

Exchange does that for non-MAPI clients, which always sends you racing to read
whatever it was you weren't supposed to see. Great thinking.

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vaksel
is it me or is their approach stupid as hell?

wouldn't it make more sense simply not to process sending the email for a
specific user-specified time?

i.e. automatically you don't send email for 10 seconds, but a user can go to
preferences and setup the undo feature for 1 min, 5 min, 10 min, 20 min etc.

I mean 5 seconds is pretty much useless...its more or less the "oh shit, I
forgot an attachment", but there is really no difference for user between 5
seconds or 5 minutes, and I'm fairly sure most people, given the choice, would
select the 5 minute delay.

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simplegeek
If memory serves, I think Paul Bucheit mentioned this a long time ago and I
wonder what took them so long? But, anyways, a good one I need this one.

~~~
vegashacker
[http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/quick-all-
actions-s...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/quick-all-actions-
should-have-undo.html)

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ryanwaggoner
I don't really see the logic in this. It seems like the typical workflow
they're imagining goes something like:

    
    
      1. Compose email to A-list investor
      2. Hit send
      3. Realize that you forgot to attach the deck
      4. Kill self
    

So now they're trying to make this the workflow:

    
    
      1. Compose email to A-list investor
      2. Hit send
      3. Realize that you forgot to attach the deck
      4. Hit undo and fix problem
    

All well and good, but step #3 requires you to look over your email and
realize you made a mistake. Why not just do that _before_ you hit send?

~~~
jrockway
Why should keyboards have a backspace key? Just make sure you always press the
correct key, then you won't need it. Easy!

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nazgulnarsil
I think 10 seconds would be the sweet spot. I mean, the moment of panic
usually comes about 3 seconds after you hit send. leaving 2 seconds for the
actual click.

~~~
mildweed
Especially in light of the fact that to be effective, you have to forget the
delay is there. Then there's the moment of panic, then there's the moment of
remembering that there IS an undo feature, and then the moments to click back
to the GMail tab and click.

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sharjeel
Microsoft Exchange introduced this feature years ago.

I once did mistake of sending mail to wrong person in my university and within
seconds of clicking "send" I'd realized what I'd done as well as the
consequences of it. I rushed to the sys admin who calmly said "No problem,
we'll take it out from queue. On average a message, outside our domain, takes
fiteen MINUTES to get dispatched!". And he removed mine from the queue. This
was back in 2002.

~~~
furyg3
Exch Admins can play with these settings. Adjusting when the queue runs is one
option, but you could be unlucky and hit send when there's a small queue
that's running in 10 seconds. I _think_ admins can also force a delay, which
is a different operation than spooling it for the normal SMTP process.

Outlook/Exchange users can also delay sending (though reneging may take an
admin to do): [http://www.tech-
recipes.com/rx/1638/how_to_delay_sending_mes...](http://www.tech-
recipes.com/rx/1638/how_to_delay_sending_message_outlook/) . Gmail needs this
feature badly!

Handy if you'd like to compose a announcement early or appear to be working
hard at 6 when you really left early to hit the links :)

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markessien
It does not seem to work. I sent an email to myself, immediately hit undo. It
told me that the action was undone, but there was a new email sitting waiting
for me.

~~~
jwilliams
I think there is a shortcut when you email yourself (even if you email to an
account that gmail is POP accessing rather than the gmail itself, it will
appear immediately) - perhaps this circumvents the undo.

~~~
albertni
Yep, in fact this is especially noticeable in situations when your GMail is
not working for whatever reason. Once, I had my GMail account temporarily
disabled for a day (I set up some filter that immediately deleted and
forwarded certain e-mails which apparently got triggered too many times and
caused a temp shutdown) but was still able to send e-mails to myself.

Lesson here is, if you use GMail, don't e-mail yourself to check if sending
works at the moment.

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roblocop
I wonder if the Mail Goggles idea was a spinoff of the the undo idea:
[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-
sendi...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-
you-later.html). Generally seems like the same dilemma. Does the recipient
have a right to your drunken email?

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mutoxen
Strange... without the undo feature you will need to send another e-mail to
that person or another time the same e-mail to the right person. In this way
google will display more ads and earn more money... maybe it will be a 'pay
for undo', or a 'this undo was sponsorized by ___'

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shadytrees
Cool! I guess this is as close as it's going get to my pet feature request: a
preview feature for emails. (I absolutely suck at scanning text for errors in
a textbox.)

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eli
finally!

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hypermatt
I will use this quite often lol, I would like to configure it tho.

