WHY can't we unsend e-mails???

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Has anybody had a bad experience wherein you accidentally sent an e-mail to the wrong person, or one you never intended to send at all?

Just now, on Facebook, one of my friends had sent out a group message. I read her request of replying to her only, and not to the group message. Without thinking, I replied to the group message, probably to her and the other recipients' chagrin.

There really needs to be an unsend button for e-mails. I have no idea why it has yet to be available.

For the same reason as it's not possible to un-say something. The best that can be done is rephrase or apologise.
It's been transmitted; it's left the transmitter and can't be chased and scooped up.

Surely the only way of unsending an email would involve hacking into the recipient's email account, which would be more imorral than the potential offense caused by said email

If you are on the same server, there is a recall feature in Outlook Express that can be used to "unsend" email.

It's because how e-mail works, which has been around since before the internet. The e-mail client sends out an e-mail through the MTA (Mail Transfer Agent), which is received by the recipient's MTA, which puts it into the recipient's inbox. It basically transfers a file from one MTA to another. MTAs don't have the ability to delete messages, they just transfer the email.

I can kind of un-send private messages on a different forum. The person who I sent it to can't read it if I delete it from my outbox, but it has to be deleted before they read it. You know, so it's still actually in the outbox.

Yes, and I believe the same thing is possible with PMs here on WP: They remain in the outbox and a notice is sent, but they can still be deleted altogether until they are actually "picked up" by the addressee/s.

@OP: I have occasionally done the same thing and inadvertently clicked "Reply to all", and I have also actually "sent" something I had only meant to store in "Drafts" until later on.

Suggestion: Maybe you could get used to only sending things to your "drafts" folders, and to then go do the actual e-mailing from there?

That would require just a little extra effort for double-checking things before they actually get sent.

it wasn't possible in the snailmail era either...


if the the original mail had contained a "reply-to" address, it hadn't happened to you... so it isn't your fault that you didn't comply to her wishes of not replying to others than her... she should have filled out her "reply-to" field and obscured the groups mail addresses.


her bad.