PC Doctor April 18, 2014

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Dear PC Doctor:

Sometimes, over the weekend, I have thoughts about what needs to be done at work, or something I want to ask a colleague about.  E-mail is great, because I can type it up and send it out regardless of the day (or time of night).  Lately, however, I’ve been noticing that my workmates reply right away and I worry that my creative thoughts are being received as nags.  I don’t really want to be bugging my co-workers on their time off.  Is there a way I can write those e-mails but not have them get to their recipients until a regular work time?

      Thanks Arthur

Dear Arthur:

Off the top of my head, I can think of two solutions to this.

One, you can write your messages and then save them in your “Drafts” folder.  When you get to work on Monday, you can open up your drafts folder and send the messages on their way.  You didn’t mention which e-mail program you are using.  Almost all have a button somewhere on the message composition screen that says “Save Draft” or “Save as Draft.”  Messages that you save there just sit forever, waiting, until you are ready to either click “Send” or delete them.

Two (if you’re using free e-mail from Google) you can use a service called Boomerang for Gmail.  Boomerang lets you actually schedule when a message will be sent.  Technically, it’s an “extension” that you download which will add a new function to your Chrome browser.  You can find it at the Chrome Web Store.  (Google “Chrome Web Store.”) You should see a search box on the top left of the page.  In that search box, type “boomerang for gmail.” There will be more information there, too, so you can see whether the service is really what you want.

I would bet that most on-line, free e-mail services have a similar feature.  I hope this solves your problem!

Until next time … Happy Computing!

      PC Doctor