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Mar 22, 2009

Gmail Undo - the solution for someone with a quick click

Gmail comes through again with another new feature that is very useful.

Undo.

They now give you 5 seconds to realize you changed your mind and did not really want to send that email. What used to be a built in delay of 5 seconds before gmail actually delivered your email, is now turned into a feature that allows you to change your mind within those 5 seconds. All you have to do is click the "Undo" link where it says it is sending your message.

You have to enable this feature in Google Labs, but I see it as totally useful .You just have to be quick - you have to realize right away that you did not mean to send that email just yet, and also be quick to click the link.

5 seconds might just not be enough, but any longer than that and users would be complaining that email delivery is slow. Think about it - you obviously cant undo a sent message after it gets delivered. If it would take more than a few seconds to deliver an email, allowing you more time to undo, you would complain how long they take to deliver your message.

One future adjustment to this feature that I can see as adding to it and making it even better is allowing you to set in the settings of your mailbox how much time to wait - how many seconds - before delivering your email. You would be able to set 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever you think is reasonable for your demands on email usage. That would allow you to decide how much time to have for your undo.

One more thing, I found out that if you have "Offline Gmail" enabled, this will not work. I tried testing it and could not figure out why I was not getting the undo link. Then I disabled "Offline Gmail", and the "Undo" suddenly started working..

Way to go Google.

10 comments:

  1. Interesting feature . . . I find it annoying that I can't edit or delete emails once I've sent them in offline mode . . .

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  2. wish i could have this feature on my mouth. would save a lot of embarrassment!

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  3. better than extending time would be to retract the email, like outlook offers. thats a cool feature.

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  4. I agree with the e-mail retract.

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  5. interesting, indeed

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  6. I can't see where to enable this feature in google labs?

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  7. if you go to the settings in your gmail account, and click on the link for "Labs", you will get a list of all the features offered in google labs. You can choose each one to enable or disable. In the lower quadrant of the list, you will see Undo.

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  8. Unless you like to use a real desktop client for your mail. I can't stand using a browser...

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  9. with gmail I seem to have taken a liking to using it in the browser rather than the client...

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  10. thanks for postin bout this. i got into enough embarrassing situations to appreciate this...

    ReplyDelete

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