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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