How to send email at specific time (not just delay) in Outlook 2010 or other mail client

Question

Looking for a way to send mail at a specific time. I know in Outlook 2010 how to make sure mail is not sent 'before' a specific time, but that doesn't guarantee that it's going to send at that time.

I also tried setting the send/receive interval to one minute in Outlook but the test email I created with a delay is still sitting in the outbox several minutes after the "Do not deliver before" time that I set. I'm not sure why it hasn't been sent yet and it doesn't appear that it's going to get sent unless I specifically hit the send/receive button.

So I either need help understanding why Outlook isn't automatically sending this email on its own, or else just another tool to accomplish this. I don't care what I have to use, just so long as it works.

EDIT: I just hit the send/receive button and the message is still sitting in the outbox. I double/triple checked the delay time I set was correct. It's set to not send before 4/25/2012 at 9:42pm. It's now 10:02pm and I don't know how to make this message send short of removing the delay, which sort of defeats the purpose.

EDIT 2: I even tried removing the delay, but apparently that's impossible since every time I remove the delay and save the message, I find that Outlook has automatically added the delay back and set it for 5:00pm. So it's impossible to even send this message at all. I want to punch the MS Office team in the face right now.

Answer 1

How to send email at specific time (not just delay) in Outlook 2010 or other mail client

Use sendEmail, Batch Script, and Windows Task Scheduler

Another way (at the bottom of my answer) is with scheduling a batch script to send on a custom schedule with Windows Task Scheduler with the sendEmail application. Just define the schedule there accordingly for the time you need the email to be sent.

Getting sendEmail Ready and Scheduled with Batch Script

sendEmail Information

• sendEmail (No TLS) - Download
• sendEmail (with TLS) - Download

Scheduled Batch Script with sendEmail

(You should be able to get away with the above "No TLS" download and exe for the sendEmail application that you'll schedule for sending emails with a batch script, calling it via command line, and scheduling it with Windows Task Scheduler—If you have trouble or need to authenticate with TLS, I'll add an example script how to do it that way as well if needed.)

(When you download the Zip file from the links provided, just put the exe in a Windows directory in your PATH environmenal variable (i.e. %SYSTEMROOT%\System32) or call it full path explictly (e.g. "C:\SendEmail\sendEmail.exe"). The example batch script logic expects it in a PATH environmental variable location. If you need logic to point to it explicitly, tell me the full path where you need to reference the exe and I'll add an example that way too.)

@ECHO OFF

:SendEmail
SET EMAILSERVER=emailserver.domain.com
SET subject=This is my subject
SET FromAddress=[e-mail]
SET ReplyAddress=[e-mail]
SET ToAddress=[e-mail]
SET EMAILBODY1=This is my email body paragraph1
SET EMAILBODY2=This is my email body paragraph2
SET Signature=My Name
SENDEMAIL -f %FromAddress% -t %ToAddress% -u %subject% -m "%EMAILBODY1%<br />  <br />%EMAILBODY2%<br />  <br />%Signature%" -s %EMAILSERVER%:25 -o message-content-type=html reply-to=%ReplyAddress%
GOTO :SendEmail

Task Scheduler

See this answer here for full details of what options you should pick when scheduling this job with Windows Task Scheduler ⇒ Options to Select with Task Scheduler Job Setup

Answer 2

Responding to your "or other mail client", Thunderbird has an add-on called Send Later that gives you very flexible and complete control over when a message is sent. You can set exact date and time, select from several incremental "later" buttons, and even send a recurring message. Documentation is available here.

It does have a few limitations. For example, Thunderbird must be running for messages to be sent and return receipts don't work in conjunction with it. It is incompatible with Microsoft Exchange because MS Exchange removes the “X-Send-Later” headers that it uses to keep track of message scheduled delivery times.

I use it and it works as it should (I have no connection with the product).

Answer 3

This is a known bug when using a server such as Microsoft Exchange see "Send Time" time stamp information is incorrect when you send a delayed delivery message in Outlook