Microsoft is bringing a much-needed feature to Outlook

We recently reported that Microsoft is facing a lot of criticism for removing the contact masking feature from Outlook. This is something that the Redmond tech firm announced in February, but it seems like customers are only starting to understand the negative impact of this change now. While Microsoft hasn't made any commitments to restore contact masking, it is now working on a new functionality for Exchange Online, and by extension, for Outlook.

In an update to its Microsoft 365 Roadmap (ID 561330) and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the company has indicated that it is working on cross-tenant message recall in Exchange Online. As some of you may be aware, Exchange Online and services which utilize that infrastructure have a message recall capability that allows users to recall sent emails.

This is a particularly important feature because it allows users to recall emails that were either accidentally sent to the wrong recipient or sent at all. Over the past few years, Microsoft has been consistently improving message recall capabilities and even brought it to the Outlook mobile apps. However, one major limitation present in this feature was the fact that it only worked within your own organization.

Now, it appears that Microsoft is finally working around this problem by enabling the ability to recall messages even across tenants. This will benefit many users, particularly those who are communicating with partners, clients, or contractors not within their own tenant account. That said, Microsoft has highlighted that in order for this functionality to work as expected, IT admins of the other organizations will need to add you to their "recall allow list".

General availability for this feature is planned for August 2026. However, do keep in mind that dates listed on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap are not set in stone, and can get deferred. Based on user feedback or breaking bugs, Microsoft may even decide to not release certain features at all.