How to Resend a Message in macOS Mail

Need to send an email again? No problem

What to Know

  • In the Sent folder, select the email you want to resend, then select Message > Send Again.
  • Or, select the email and press Command+Shift+D or right-click and select Send Again.
  • To reuse only parts of a message, set up text snippets: Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement.

This article explains how to resend a message in macOS Mail. The information applies to Macs running macOS Catalina (10.15), macOS Mojave (10.14), macOS High Sierra (10.13), or macOS Sierra (10.12).

How to Resend a Message in macOS Mail

To resend a sent email in Mac Mail:

  1. In the Mail app, select the email you want to resend from the Sent folder.

    Mail app showing an open Sent folder.
  2. Select Message in the menu bar and select Send Again in the drop-down menu to open the email in a new mail window.

    Message menu in the Mail app

    You can also highlight an email in the list and either press Command+Shift+D or click the right mouse button and select Send Again from the context menu that appears.

  3. Make any changes you want to make to the message or the recipients and then click the Send Message icon to send it again.

    Sent email opened in a new message window

You can also resend sent messages from other folders or reuse any email you received. Keep in mind that a message you send using an email you received, rather than sent, is from your email address, not the original sender.

Other Options for Reusing Text in Mail

If you want to reuse only parts of a message, you can copy and paste or set up text snippets. You can use Text snippets located at Mail > Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement in emails you are composing in macOS Mail to great—and productive—effect.

Resending also makes it easy to designate and use emails as message templates in macOS Mail: All it takes is saving them to a Templates folder.

MacBook image with mail
 alexsi / Getty Images

Resending Emails in macOS Mail

With the Mail application that ships as part of macOS, you can quickly pull up a sent email, make a change to the text or the recipient, and send it on its way in seconds.

There are plenty of reasons you might want to resend an email:

  • You need to send practically the same message to another recipient with a minor change.
  • You sent it to an outdated email address and now have the current address.
  • An email was returned to you for failure of delivery, and you want to try again.
  • You sent an email from the wrong account with the wrong email address in the From header line to unsubscribe from one of those pesky mailing lists at a nitpicking list server.

In Apple's macOS Mail application, reusing an email you sent (or any email) is particularly easy. You can resend messages you sent before or emails you received. Before the email is sent on its way, you have an opportunity to edit the text or change the recipient.

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