Outlook – How to send email at specific time (not just delay) in Outlook 2010 or other mail client

emailmicrosoft-outlook-2010

Looking for a way to send mail at a specific time. I know in Outlook 2010 how to make sure mail is not sent 'before' a specific time, but that doesn't guarantee that it's going to send at that time.

I also tried setting the send/receive interval to one minute in Outlook but the test email I created with a delay is still sitting in the outbox several minutes after the "Do not deliver before" time that I set. I'm not sure why it hasn't been sent yet and it doesn't appear that it's going to get sent unless I specifically hit the send/receive button.

So I either need help understanding why Outlook isn't automatically sending this email on its own, or else just another tool to accomplish this. I don't care what I have to use, just so long as it works.

EDIT: I just hit the send/receive button and the message is still sitting in the outbox. I double/triple checked the delay time I set was correct. It's set to not send before 4/25/2012 at 9:42pm. It's now 10:02pm and I don't know how to make this message send short of removing the delay, which sort of defeats the purpose.

EDIT 2: I even tried removing the delay, but apparently that's impossible since every time I remove the delay and save the message, I find that Outlook has automatically added the delay back and set it for 5:00pm. So it's impossible to even send this message at all. I want to punch the MS Office team in the face right now.

Best Answer

Responding to your "or other mail client", Thunderbird has an add-on called Send Later that gives you very flexible and complete control over when a message is sent. You can set exact date and time, select from several incremental "later" buttons, and even send a recurring message. Documentation is available here.

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It does have a few limitations. For example, Thunderbird must be running for messages to be sent and return receipts don't work in conjunction with it. It is incompatible with Microsoft Exchange because MS Exchange removes the “X-Send-Later” headers that it uses to keep track of message scheduled delivery times.

I use it and it works as it should (I have no connection with the product).

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