Gmail Adds 5-Second Panic Button

by Mary Cullen on March 26, 2009

in Business Email

Gmail launched a new tool last week that helps prevent business email mishaps: the “Undo Send” feature.

Credit: Google

Credit: Google

This feature allows the sender to recall a message, but only within 5 seconds of sending.  It’s useful if you notice that you inadvertently clicked “reply to all” instead of replying to one recipient, or forgot to include an attachment, or notice a typo as the message is sent.

To enable this new function in Gmail, click on “Settings” and then the “Labs” tab.

Gmail labs launched Google Goggles in October, 2008. This feature requires a sender to correctly answer a simple mathematical problem before a late night message is sent, preventing tired (or, possibly, drunk) emailing.

If these features help protect us from ourselves, use them! But don’t forget that shaping email well is a writer requirement that technology cannot replace:

“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”

Edward R. Murrow

Read more on the Official GMail blog.

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