Delay sending an email until the next working day
I know there are a fair few people that have automatic delays on their email to avoid sending emails too quickly but for some time now I've wanted to restrict emails so they're only send during office hours -to avoid getting into email conversations on the weekend.
I was looking around and I came across this VBA script to delay emails which was a good start but it had a few flaws to it.
Outlook being Outlook, it's a little tricky to install a VBA script so it's probably easiest to check Google for that side of things but here's an adapted version of the script which will delay sending emails until 9am the next working day.
Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean) On Error GoTo ErrHand ' Error Handling Dim objMailItem As MailItem ' Object to hold mail item Dim SendDate As String ' The date to send delayed mail Dim SendTime As String ' The time to send delayed mail Dim DelayMailAfter As Integer ' Latest hour mail is sent live Dim DelayMailBefore As Integer ' Earliest hour to send mail live Dim DelayForDays As Integer ' The number of days to delay the email for Dim MailIsDelayed As Boolean ' Set if the mail will be delayed Dim NoDeferredDelivery As String ' Value if deferred delivery is disabled SendTime = " 09:00:00" ' Time to deliver delayed mail (6AM) DelayMailBefore = 9 ' Delay mail sent before 5:00AM DelayMailAfter = 17 ' Delay mail sent after 8:59PM DelayForDays = 0 ' Default to sending emails the same day MailIsDelayed = True ' We assume it's delayed by default NoDeferredDelivery = "1/1/4501" ' Magic number Outlook uses for "delay mail box isn't checked" Set objMailItem = Item ' Outlook.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem ' Check and make sure current item is an unsent message If objMailItem.Sent = True Then Err.Raise 9000 End If If Weekday(Date, vbMonday) = 6 Then ' Today is Saturday, delay mail two days DelayForDays = 2 ElseIf Weekday(Date, vbMonday) = 7 Then ' Today is Sunday, delay mail one day DelayForDays = 1 Else ' Currently a weekday If DatePart("h", Now) < DelayMailBefore Then ' It's early morning - delay it DelayForDays = 0 ElseIf DatePart("h", Now) > DelayMailAfter Then ' It's late night - delay it until tomorrow morning If Weekday(Date, vbMonday) = 5 Then ' Today is Friday, delay mail until Monday DelayForDays = 3 Else DelayForDays = 1 End If Else MailIsDelayed = False End If End If If MailIsDelayed And objMailItem.DeferredDeliveryTime = NoDeferredDelivery Then Dim NewSendDate As Date NewSendDate = (Date + DelayForDays) & SendTime ans = MsgBox("Out of hours - do you want to delay mail until " & NewSendDate & "?", vbYesNo, "Delay out of hours mail?") If ans = vbYes Then objMailItem.DeferredDeliveryTime = NewSendDate Else objMailItem.DeferredDeliveryTime = NoDeferredDelivery End If End If Exit Sub ErrHand: ' Handle well-known errors with message ' Other errors, just tell the user If Err.Number = 13 Then ' No current item or current item isn't a mail message ' MsgBox "Future delivery can only be set on mail items", vbOKOnly, "Not a mail item" End Sub ElseIf Err.Number = 9000 Then ' The active message has already been sent MsgBox "Please run this macro from an unsent mail item", vbOKOnly, "Not an unsent mail item" Else MsgBox "An error has occured on line " & Erl & _ ", with a description: " & Err.Description & _ ", and an error number " & Err.Number End If End Sub
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