How do I stop an email from being sent

[BigAlGeorge]

Sometimes, you have a sensitive email in the drafts folder, something that you do not want to send but keep editing, perhaps over a few days until you are sure you have the correct contents.
I think all of us at some time or other have accidentally sent an email which in hindsight we should not have.

What Im thinking of is a lock flag that can be checked when you are editing, or unchecked when the message is definitely ready to go. Is there such a thing or similar?

[tanstaafl]

Not that I'm aware of. There is an add-on to schedule a time/date to send a message - https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... -3/?src=ss - but I don't think that is what you are looking for.

What I do is not fill out the To: header until I'm ready to send it if I need to keep editing it over a few days. That way if I accidentally try to send it too soon it will fail.

[tomdkat]

What I do is not fill out the To: header until I'm ready to send it if I need to keep editing it over a few days. That way if I accidentally try to send it too soon it will fail.

Yep, this is exactly what I do as well.

Peace...

[BigAlGeorge]

In my case Ive got an email with 2 body options, but there are a lot of BCC already filled in. Sending the wrong body by accident is not desirable.
I havent written any addons, but would imagine a send lock would be a fairly simple method to implement.
Thanks for replies though. Al.

[DaveRo]

I just type xxxxxx into the To: field, and remove it when it's finished.

[BigAlGeorge]

Yes, xxxx works a treat, but only while you are editing. Once its saved back to drafts the xxxxx is purged, so you could still open and accidentally send. Thanks anyway. Al.

[tanstaafl]

You need a '@' and a domain so that it recognizes its a email address rather than some random string. If you use bogus_fake@gmail.com for example its happy. If you want to use something like that create a contact for it in your address book so that you can use autocomplete when you start typing bogus.

I used https://tools.verifyemailaddress.io to verify that is a invalid email address (unlike bogusfake@gmail.com which somebody supposedly actually owns)

[DaveRo]

Yes, xxxx works a treat, but only while you are editing. Once its saved back to drafts the xxxxx is purged, so you could still open and accidentally send.

So it does. I don't think it used to - I've been doing that for years. But I no longer have TB68 to check.

That's arguably a bug. If you save a draft it shouldn't change anything IMO.

You could use my addon
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/th ... ecipients/
set the limit to zero and have any address in To:, or CC yourself. But you might click OK from habit - you'd get the warning every time.

That non-BCC limit addon will soon be obsolete, BTW: the facility is being built-in.

[DaveRo]

I will now use xxx@xxx which is a valid (local) email address. If I send it, my SMTP server rejects the whole email because xxx is not a valid domain.

So it works for me but you need to check it works for you. Maybe your SMTP server will reject that address and send to the others.

And I'll check whether it still works in the next version of TB!

[tomdkat]

I will now use xxx@xxx which is a valid (local) email address. If I send it, my SMTP server rejects the whole email because xxx is not a valid domain.

That's quite the "adult" email address. That's a cool "stub" email address. I was thinking to use "do-not@send-this-email-message.email" or something to catch my eye.

Anyway, great ideas!

Peace...

[DaveRo]

Or set up an empty mailing list called STOP. That saves as a draft, but fails on send.