Scheduling in Outlook, in one screen
Two different features answer the question how do I schedule an email in Outlook, and they behave nothing alike. One hands the message to a server that holds it. The other keeps it on your machine and waits for you.
| Schedule send | New Outlook, Outlook on the web, Outlook for Mac, Outlook mobile. The message waits in Drafts, on the server, and leaves at the chosen time whether or not the app is running. |
| Delay Delivery | Classic Outlook for Windows. The message waits in your local Outbox and leaves only when Outlook is running at the chosen time. |
| Account types | Schedule send requires an Exchange or Microsoft 365 mailbox. Microsoft states it is not available for IMAP or POP accounts. |
| Most common failure | A delayed message sits in the Outbox all night because the laptop was closed. |
| Cancelling | Open the message from Drafts and select Cancel send. There is no edit in place: cancel, change, schedule again. |
Every guide on this topic gives you the same three clicks, and the clicks are correct. They are also the least useful part of the answer, because the click path is not what decides whether your message actually goes out at 8am on Monday. What decides that is where the pending message is physically stored while it waits. This page starts there, then gives the steps for each version, then covers the cases where the option is missing entirely.
Two mechanisms, one name
Email is a one directional handoff: your client passes the message to your outgoing server, which opens a connection to the receiving server and transfers it. That exchange is defined by the SMTP standard in RFC 5321, and nothing in it describes a message that arrives early and waits. Scheduling never happens in the protocol, then. It happens before the handoff, on whichever machine is holding the message.
That machine is the whole story, and there are only two candidates.
The server holds it. Your mailbox server accepts the message, marks it pending, and does the SMTP handoff on your behalf at the appointed minute. Your computer plays no part: close the app, shut the laptop, get on a plane. This is what modern Outlook calls Schedule send.
Your computer holds it. Outlook stores the message locally with a do not send before timestamp, and a process inside Outlook watches the clock. If Outlook is not running at that minute, nothing is watching, and the message stays where it is. This is what classic Outlook calls Delay Delivery.
Both are legitimate. Only one survives you closing your laptop, and everything below follows from that difference.
Schedule send in new Outlook and Outlook on the web
This is the server side mechanism, and Microsoft documents the same steps for new Outlook for Windows and for Outlook on the web:
- Compose the message and fill in the recipients.
- Select the dropdown arrow next to Send.
- Choose Schedule send.
- Pick one of the default options, or choose a custom date and time.
- Select Send.
After you select Send, the message does not disappear into the Outbox. It stays in your Drafts folder until the delivery time. Drafts is a server folder, synchronised across every device on the account, so the pending message is visible from your phone as well as your desktop, and that is also where you go to cancel it.
The account type limit
Microsoft states plainly that Schedule send is not available for IMAP or POP accounts. If you added a Gmail, Yahoo or generic mailbox to Outlook using standard POP3 and IMAP settings, the option will not appear, and no update will make it appear. The feature needs a mailbox server willing to hold the message, and an IMAP account does not give Outlook one.
On an Outlook.com or Hotmail address, check how it is connected before concluding anything: the same address can be added as an Exchange style account or as a plain IMAP account, and the two behave differently here. The Outlook.com and Hotmail server settings reference shows both. For a work mailbox, see the Microsoft 365 mail server settings.
Delay Delivery in classic Outlook for Windows
Classic Outlook, the desktop application many organisations still run, has no Schedule send. It has Delay Delivery, in a different place and with different behaviour.
The steps
- Compose the message.
- Open the Options tab in the message window ribbon.
- Select Delay Delivery.
- Under delivery options, tick Do not deliver before and set the date and time.
- Close the properties dialog, then press Send as normal.
Pressing Send here does not send anything. It moves the message into your Outbox, where it sits, visible, until the timestamp passes.
Why the message sits in your Outbox
Classic Outlook normally runs in Cached Exchange Mode, which keeps a local copy of your mailbox in an offline data file and synchronises it with the server periodically. When you set a do not deliver before time in that mode, Microsoft’s own support answers are explicit about what happens: the message is deferred to the local Outbox, not to the server. The server never learns that a message is pending. So the message can only be released by the copy of Outlook running on your machine, and if that copy is closed at the appointed time, the release simply does not happen. It goes out later, when you next open Outlook.
The exception: online mode
There is one configuration where classic delayed delivery does not need Outlook running. With an Exchange or Microsoft 365 account in online mode, rather than Cached Exchange Mode, Outlook has no local cache to hold the message in, so the deferred message is submitted to the Exchange message queue and held there until the scheduled time. Online mode is toggled under File, Account Settings, Account Settings, the Email tab, Change, by clearing the cached mode checkbox. Microsoft notes this does not apply to Outlook.com, IMAP or POP accounts, which do not support online mode at all.
The practical rule is short. For a message to leave at 7am while you are asleep, either the account is in online mode, or the machine stays awake with Outlook open. There is no third option.
Outlook for Mac, and the mobile apps
If you want to schedule an email in Outlook Mac, the path matches the modern Windows one and so does the behaviour. Compose the message, add the recipients, select the dropdown arrow beside Send, choose Schedule send, enter the date and time, and select OK. The message waits in Drafts, and Microsoft is unambiguous about the consequence: it will be sent even if Outlook is not open on your computer. That single sentence is the difference between the Mac experience and the classic Windows one.
The same account restriction applies. Microsoft documents Schedule send on Mac for Exchange accounts, including Outlook.com mailboxes hosted on Microsoft 365 and Exchange 2016 CU5 or later, and not for IMAP or POP accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo or iCloud added to the app.
To schedule an email in the Outlook app on a phone, open a new message and look in the overflow menu beside the send control, where Schedule send sits with the other send options. Because the scheduling is held server side, a scheduled message from Outlook mobile does not depend on the phone staying awake or the app staying open.
Not sure which desktop application you are looking at? The Microsoft Outlook download and version overview covers what ships where. A quick tell: a Delay Delivery button on the Options tab means classic Outlook.
Delaying every message you send
Wanting a safety net on every message is a different problem, and classic Outlook solves it with a rule rather than with Delay Delivery. In Rules and Alerts, a rule applied to messages you send can carry the action defer delivery by a number of minutes. Everything you send then waits in the Outbox for that long, which is your window to catch the wrong recipient or the missing attachment.
Microsoft’s troubleshooting documentation for this rule exists for the opposite reason: people find messages stuck in the Outbox for a minute or more and do not know why. The answer is usually a deferred delivery rule someone configured and forgot. The fix is to open Rules and Alerts, find the rule whose description contains defer delivery by a number of minutes, and clear that action.
The rule inherits the Outbox problem above: a deferred message still needs Outlook running to leave.
Cancelling or changing a scheduled message
Microsoft’s flow for a scheduled message is the same everywhere Schedule send exists, and it is a cancel, not an edit:
- Open the Drafts folder.
- Open the scheduled message.
- Select Cancel send.
The message then behaves like any other draft: send it now, change it, or schedule it again. There is no control that edits the delivery time in place, so rescheduling always means cancelling first.
In classic Outlook the message is sitting in your Outbox, so open it from there, reopen Options and Delay Delivery, and either change the do not deliver before value or clear the tick.
When Schedule send is not showing
Schedule send Outlook not showing is one of the most searched follow ups on this topic, and it has three causes, in order of how often they turn out to be the real one.
- The account is IMAP or POP. This is the majority case. There is no server on your side holding the message, so the feature is not offered. Nothing in settings will change this; the account itself has to change.
- You are in classic Outlook. The feature you are looking for is called Delay Delivery and it is on the Options tab, not under the Send button. If there is no dropdown next to Send, that is the tell.
- The recipient field is empty. In some versions the send dropdown does not offer scheduling until the message has at least one recipient. Fill in the To field first, then look again.
One case that is not a cause: an out of date Outlook. On an Exchange or Microsoft 365 mailbox in a modern client the option is there, and on an IMAP mailbox no version of the app will produce it.
Scheduling a reply, and what scheduling does not change
To schedule an email in Outlook when replying, use the same dropdown: reply as normal, then choose Schedule send before pressing send. A reply changes neither the mechanism nor the account restriction.
What scheduling leaves untouched is worth stating, because the controls sit next to each other and get conflated. The Options tab that holds Delay Delivery in classic Outlook also holds the encryption and permission controls, which is where how to send a secure email in Outlook is actually answered. Those decide who can read the message; Delay Delivery decides when it leaves. Setting one does not set the other.
Scheduling also leaves the sending address, the authentication checked on the receiving side and the destination folder exactly as they were. A message that would have landed in the promotions area at 9am lands there at 6am too.
Scheduling is a courtesy, not a sending strategy
There is a good reason to schedule mail from your mailbox: you wrote it at 11pm and would rather not look like it, or your recipient is six time zones away and you would rather land at the top of their morning than the bottom of their night. That is a courtesy, it works, and Schedule send is the right tool for it.
It stops being the right tool as soon as the volume goes up. A personal or work mailbox is provisioned for human sending patterns, and forty near identical messages leaving it in a single minute on Tuesday morning is the exact shape reputation systems are built to notice. The outcome is filtering rather than an error message, which makes it hard to diagnose. If that is the job, the tooling and domain strategy in the guide to cold email outreach, warmup and compliance matter far more than the send time does.
Placement is its own question, separate from timing. On the Microsoft side, whether the message reaches the primary view is decided by the sorting layer described in the breakdown of how Focused Inbox chooses. The Gmail counterpart of this feature, and the rest of the sender relevant controls, are covered in the reference on Gmail features for senders. If you are weighing up which client to standardise on, the directory of desktop, web and mobile email clients lays out what each one supports.
Schedule for politeness and for time zones, and stop there. Anything that looks like a campaign belongs somewhere built to send campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no schedule send option in Outlook?
Almost always because the mailbox is an IMAP or POP account, and Microsoft does not offer Schedule send for those. The feature needs a mailbox server that will hold the message for you, and an IMAP connection does not provide one. The other common reason is that you are in classic Outlook for Windows, where the equivalent feature exists under a different name, Delay Delivery, on the Options tab of the message window rather than under the Send button.
How do I set an email to send at a certain time?
In new Outlook, Outlook on the web, Outlook for Mac and the mobile apps: compose the message, open the dropdown next to Send, choose Schedule send, set the date and time, and confirm. In classic Outlook for Windows: open the Options tab, select Delay Delivery, tick do not deliver before, set the time, close the dialog and press Send. The first stores the pending message on the server, the second stores it in your local Outbox.
Can you delay sending an email in Outlook?
Yes, in two ways. A single message can be delayed with Delay Delivery in classic Outlook or Schedule send in the newer clients. Every message you send can be delayed by a fixed interval using a rule in classic Outlook that defers delivery by a number of minutes, which is the usual way people give themselves a few minutes to catch a mistake before a message actually leaves.
How do I schedule an email in Outlook 365?
A Microsoft 365 mailbox is an Exchange mailbox, so it supports the server side feature everywhere it is offered. In the web client and in new Outlook, use the dropdown beside Send and choose Schedule send. If your organisation still runs classic Outlook on the desktop, you get Delay Delivery instead, and it is worth checking whether the account is in cached or online mode, because that decides whether a delayed message can leave while Outlook is closed.
Will a scheduled email send if Outlook is closed?
With Schedule send, yes: the message is held on the server and Microsoft states for the Mac client that it will be sent even if Outlook is not open. With classic Delay Delivery in Cached Exchange Mode, no: the message is deferred to the local Outbox rather than to the server, so it can only leave while Outlook is running, and it will go out the next time you open the application. The exception is an Exchange account in online mode, where the deferred message is submitted to the server queue instead.
How do I schedule an email in Outlook Classic?
Classic Outlook does not have Schedule send. Compose the message, go to the Options tab, select Delay Delivery, tick do not deliver before and set the date and time, then close the dialog and press Send. The message moves to the Outbox and stays visible there until the time passes. To change your mind, open it from the Outbox and either edit the time or clear the tick.
Can you schedule an email in Outlook on a Mac?
Yes. Select the arrow next to Send, choose Schedule send, enter the date and time and select OK. Microsoft documents the feature for Exchange accounts, including Outlook.com mailboxes hosted on Microsoft 365 and Exchange 2016 CU5 or later, and not for IMAP or POP accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo or iCloud. The pending message waits in Drafts and is sent whether or not the app is open.
About this guide
The steps and account restrictions on this page follow Microsoft’s own documentation for each Outlook client, and the Outbox behaviour in classic Outlook is described as Microsoft’s support answers describe it. Protocol behaviour is sourced from the relevant RFC, linked inline. Reviewed by the SMTPedia editorial team.
About the Author
Alaa · LinkedIn
Email infrastructure specialist with 8+ years of hands-on experience in SMTP, deliverability, and email verification. I’ve configured and troubleshot mail systems across Postfix, Exchange, and cloud relays, managed IP reputation and warmup campaigns, and built verification pipelines processing millions of addresses. My work spans DNS authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), bounce handling, blocklist monitoring, and compliance frameworks including CAN-SPAM and GDPR. I write every article on SMTPedia to give email professionals, developers, and marketers the accurate, RFC-grounded reference they need.
About SMTPedia
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