Message Recall

Message recall in Outlook is the feature for retracting an already-sent email — useful when you realised you sent to the wrong person, attached the wrong file, or sent an embarrassing typo. The modern cloud-based recall introduced in 2023 is significantly more reliable than the legacy version: it works inside Microsoft 365 tenants regardless of whether the recipient has opened the message, and provides status reporting on success per recipient. Accessed in Outlook by opening the sent message → File → Info → Message Recall. The legacy recall (still operative for some scenarios) only worked if the recipient hadn't opened the message and was in the same Exchange organisation. For cross-tenant or external recipients, recall doesn't work — once it's left your tenant, it's outside Microsoft's reach.