Automatically replace recipient when replying to emails from Sent folder
Scenario:
We want to follow up on an email I already sent. I click the message in my SENT folder and then "Reply." I end up sending a message to myself.
Some competitor products that shall not be named automatically replace the recipient in this scenario with the recipient of the original email, to avoid the awkward situation of replying to myself.

36 comments
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Elise commented
Or at the very least, give a pop up warning: "are you sure you want to send this message to yourself?".
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Anonymous commented
Same comment as everybody else. Why would I ever reply to myself? I already know what I'm going to put before I've typed it!!
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Anonymous commented
I do this several times a week! It's highly frustrating. I'm trapped in the Outlook universe, and most of the time I don't want out, but this is getting old!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Anonymous commented
Still not fixed in 2019 - this is awkward.
Outlook removes myself if I click on "Reply to All", so why doesn't it replace myself with the recipient if I click "reply"? -
Anonymous commented
There is no other email system that does this because it's the most awful UX. When will this be fixed?
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GW commented
I've been caught by the poor logic behind this behaviour on more than a few occasions - wondering why the intended recipient never received the reply. When this works as expected in other email clients, you assume that an industry "standard" like Outlook who's been in the business as long as it has would have caught this long ago. An embarrassing "miss" IMHO!
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Ryan Caplin commented
While my last comment awaits moderator approval, I'll simply say this is a terrible bug, please fix it. I never want to reply to myself.
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Ryan Caplin commented
Why in the world would I EVER send an email to myself in response to a thread?! This is one of the worst bugs/features in Outlook. I am replying to the person in my thread, EVERY TIME!!!!
If I want to send an email to myself, I can take care of it without your "help."
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Vadim Maximov commented
If I sent an email to a DL, I have it in "Sent" folder already and I don't need a duplicate in "Inbox". This email is a part of the conversation (e-mail chain for the same topic/thread) which is conveniently shown to me anyway by Outlook.
Maybe it's an idea for O365 uservoice section, but I could not find the correct one.
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Anonymous commented
If you send an email to a recipient and then need to send an additional update, Outlook should default to sending to the ORIGINAL recipient. Why would I respond to my own email by sending to myself? It doens't make any sense.
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Nour Farrag commented
I always fall for this too!
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Tyla commented
This gets me all the time and I came to this forum to give this exact suggestion!
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haishun lin commented
I try to resend a follow up email,so I click the "reply" at the sended email box's email.But the receiver's email address is mine.I wish you add a function or fix the problem.You know,it is not possible to reply to myself.
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Morgan commented
I don't want to reply to myself. More times than not I've sent it to myself.
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pw commented
Yes... so simple!
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Anonymous commented
Reply from Sent Items should be smarter (like every other email program).
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ch.engstler@outlook.com commented
I would love to have this feature as well. Replying to all usually leaves my own name in the distribution list. Using resend has the drawback that the message trail is broken and the previous message is not visible in the follow up.
The actual formula to implement this could be someting along the lines of: If I reply (to all) on a message and I was the sender of the previous message and I was not part of the distribution list of the previous message, then do not add me to the message distribution list of the new message.
Kind regards,
Christian -
Anonymous commented
I've read through the comments on this thread, and have started training myself to remember to hit 'Reply All' as a workaround. But workarounds should only be a crutch that's used until what is broken is fixed. I'd like to hear from the team at Microsoft about what their plans are to implement this feature please?
I'm also Interested to hear where 346 votes stands in the rankings and what priority that would give it. I understand not everything can be built at once, but it seems to me that a small feature like this would return a lot of the feel good factor you get when you use a great product.
For me personally, I'm on the Microsoft platform for work, but on a competitor's product at home and so get reminded about this workaround daily. It guts me because for my particular workflow there's a bunch stuff that works a lot better for me in Outlook, but little things like this are like having annoying relatives in your partner's family that you have to learn to live with (obviously only from what I've heard what that's like from other people of course!).
Thanks.
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Bodo Billerbeck (HE/HIM) commented
When I go to send mail (or on my phone, just open my own last reply in a thread) and then hit reply - the only recipient added is me.
Not all that useful - could you please either just add the previous recipient, or at least pop up a warning? -
Anonymous commented
I can't count the number of emails I've sent to myself in Outlook. I can count the number of emails I've sent to myself in Gmail - zero.