# How do I preview emails before sending?

> Preview your email campaign in SecureMailMerge with a delay, allowing you to review and verify all generated emails before sending in Outlook.

## Description

If you would like to verify the result of a mail merge for all recipients (vs. just seeing a test email with the "Send Test Email" function) then you can set a delay before the first message. This will generate all messages to your Drafts folder, but delay their delivery by a number of seconds, so you can check and delete them if necessary.

## Open advanced options

![Toggle advanced options](https://www.securemailmerge.com/screenshots/advanced-options-toggle.png)

  In the campaign manager select the link that shows or changes advanced options. [The advanced options reference](https://www.securemailmerge.com/help/advanced-options/) describes the whole screen, including what carries over to your next campaign.

The preview delay lives in the **"Schedule"** group, in the **"How fast"** subgroup, alongside "Delay between messages". Its label in the add-in is "Delay before the first message".

![The How fast subgroup with both delay settings](https://www.securemailmerge.com/screenshots/advanced-options-schedule-how-fast.png)

## Option: Delay before the first message

This setting was previously labelled "seconds preview delay". All messages will be generated but set to delay their sending by the specified amount. This also works in conjunction with delay between messages. In that case the first message is delayed by the delay before the first message, the second by that delay + number of seconds between messages and so on.

Your Outlook does not have to be open for the messages to be sent after the preview delay.

## Maximum value

The maximum delay before the first message is 10 minutes (600 seconds).

## Preview campaign by Sending to Drafts Folder

Once the delay is set, first send a test message if you haven't already, and then send the campaign. The messages will be generated but will not be sent until the delay has passed.

The messages will remain in your Drafts folder for the specified amount of time. As long as they are in the Drafts folder, they have not been sent.

**Note:** This feature will NOT apply to test emails. Test emails will be sent immediately.

**Tip:** If you only want to skip some recipients rather than review every generated email, you can [unselect them in the recipient preview](https://www.securemailmerge.com/help/reviewing-and-unselecting-recipients/) before sending.

## Deleting the messages from Drafts folder in case of error

If you want to cancel the campaign, you simply delete the messages from the Drafts folder before the delay has passed.

WARNING If the campaign is large (by number of recipients or attachment size) and you delete the messages from the Drafts folder, it may take a while for Outlook to delete them. Outlook clients synchronize your changes with their servers. Sending is prevented only after the servers know about the deletion. To guarantee that the messages are deleted, log in to [https://outlook.office.com](https://outlook.office.com/) and delete the items there. This happens directly on the server without delay.