There are times where you want to delay the sending of an email to another time. For example, if you’re working late and want to send an important email to a client, you may not necessarily want it to show up in their inbox with a bunch of overnight junk at 1AM. Instead, you can schedule out the sending of that message so it will appear in their Inbox closer to when you want it to. Here’s how to do it.

This is something built in to Outlook and is easy to do. Compose your email like normal. Before you send the message, click on the “Options” tab on the menu bar and select “Delay Delivery.”

In the properties window that pops up, check off the box that says “Do not deliver before” and then adjust the date and time accordingly when you want the message to go on its merry way:

Hit the close button.

Finish up composing your email, and hit send. The message will sit in your Outbox until the date and time you set in the previous panel.

A couple caveats to this: Outlook can only send emails when it’s open. If Outlook is closed when the date and time you set hits, the message won’t send until you re-open Outlook. If you keep Outlook open all the time (like all of us), then this isn’t likely an issue, but wanted to throw it out there, just in case. And while you can send an email at anytime you want, that does not guarantee that it will arrive at that time. There are a lot of things that happen between when a message is sent and when it arrives in a user’s inbox. While generally this should put the email in a person’s inbox fairly close to when you sent it, there is a chance something could cause it to stick along the way. Also note that this only works for the Outlook desktop client, not the Outlook Web App.