How to Schedule an Email in Outlook

The Benefits

Time Management: You can compose the messages at your convenience and schedule the email to ensure that the recipients get the messages at the most appropriate or suitable time.

Working Across Multiple Time Zones: If you work with colleagues or clients in different time zones, scheduling emails can help you send messages at a specified time, which is more suitable for the recipient, improving the chances of your email being read promptly.

Follow-Up Reminders: You can use email scheduling to set up follow-up messages or reminders for yourself or others. It can be helpful for project management or ensuring that tasks are not missed.

Draft in Advance: Prepare emails when you have the time and focus to compose thoughtful messages. It can help you avoid sending hastily written or poorly thought-out emails.

Automated Marketing Campaigns: For businesses, scheduling emails is essential for planning and executing marketing campaigns. It allows you to automate the release of promotional material, newsletters, or other communications.

Emergency Preparedness: In an emergency or unexpected situation, the ability to schedule critical communications can be valuable. It ensures that vital information is disseminated promptly without requiring immediate manual intervention.

Schedule An Email in Outlook Desktop Application

• Open the Outlook application on your desktop and create a new email.
•  In the Outlook Ribbon menu, locate the “Tags” group, and open it by clicking on the expansion hook as shown in the screenshot below.

• It will open the “Properties” dialog box.
• In the “Delivery options” section, select the “Do not deliver before” option as shown in the screenshot.

• Set the required date and time.
• Exit the dialog box by clicking on the Close button.
• Compose the email if you haven’t already done so.
• Click on the Send button.

This will schedule the email to be sent at your chosen date and time.

If required, you can still edit the email by going to the “Outbox” folder of your mailbox. If you want to disable the scheduled action, you can clear the “Do not deliver before” checkbox.

Note: Outlook application must be running and connected to the Exchange server for this to work.

Scheduling an Email in Outlook for Web

• Go to https://outlook.office.com and start composing the email.

• As shown in the screenshot, click on the dropdown arrow next to the Send button and select “Schedule send”.
• Set the required date and time and click on the Send button as shown in the following screenshot.

• The scheduled email will be there in the “Drafts” folder, where you can make changes or cancel it if required.

Note: The scheduled email will be sent even if you close the browser window. This makes Outlook for Web better suited for sending scheduled emails.

Scheduling Emails in Outlook Mobile App

• Begin drafting a new message.
• Click on the three dots icon “…” as shown in the screenshot.

• Select Schedule Send from the resultant pop-up menu.

• Select the desired date and time as shown in the following screenshot.

Conclusion

The process of scheduling emails in Outlook is quite straightforward, except that it is buried a bit deep in the desktop application.

Also, the desktop application must be running and connected to the Internet in order to send the scheduled emails.

Scheduling emails in the web version of Outlook (also known as Outlook On the Web aka OOTW) is pretty easy and neat. Once you schedule the emails, they will be sent even after you close the browser window.

Useful Links

• How to Schedule an Email in Outlook?
• Delay or Schedule Sending Email Messages in Outlook for Windows

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