How to Resend an E-mail Message in Microsoft Outlook 2007

2008-12-26

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Resending a Message in Outlook

Sometimes, you complete a comprehensive e-mail message, add the recipients, and click Send. Afterwards, or even while you were clicking, you realize there is a mistake. Perhaps one of the recipient addresses is incorrect, or you forgot to add an attachment that was supposed to go along with the message.

Assuming you save messages that you send in the Sent Items folder, as is the default, you can retrieve the message and send it again. You do not have to copy the text to a new e-mail or click Forward and remove the superfluous formatting to make it appear original. Outlook has a command that recreates the e-mail as it was just before you clicked Send. You can then make any corrections or additions and send it again.

In Outlook 2007, navigate to the Sent Items folder and identify the sent message you want to resend. Double-click on the message to open it in its own window. This is necessary to access the menu on the sent message form. Outlook uses the new Office 2007 ribbon on message forms, like a sent message. With the Message tab selected in the ribbon (the default), find the Actions frame. Click on the drop down list labeled ‘Other Actions’ as shown in Figure 1. Find the command ‘Resend This Message’ and select it. This opens a new message form preformatted with the contents and addressing of the message you are resending. You can click Send at this point or make any edits or omissions you need. From this menu you can also Edit the sent message and resave it as a sent message, or recall the message, which is a hit and miss adventure in itself.

When you use ‘Resend This Message’, the actual Message ID in the internet message headers is different each time you resend even if you do not make changes. From a server, compliance, and discovery perspective, these are different and unique messages.

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This post is part of the series: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Tips

A series of Tips and Tricks for working with Microsoft Outlook 2007 both as a user and an administrator.