How to Send a Recurring Email in Outlook (New and Classic)

Outlook can't repeat a sent email on its own. To send a recurring email in Outlook, build a scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate with a Recurrence trigger and the Send an email (V2) action. For a one-time send, use Schedule send in new Outlook and Outlook on the web, or Do not deliver before in classic Outlook.

This guide covers each route by Outlook version, starting with the one that runs without you. Most people looking for a recurring email in Outlook want to automate one of a handful of internal sends.

• A weekly all-staff update that goes out every Monday morning
• A monthly benefits or open-enrollment reminder
• A safety or compliance reminder that has to land on the same day each week
• A recurring report or status summary sent to the same group

If one of those is on your plate, the Power Automate section below will have it running before lunch.

Can Outlook Send Recurring Emails Automatically?

Not by itself, in any version. Every version of Outlook can hold one message for one future time, and that is where its scheduling stops. A message has no "repeat every week" box the way a calendar event does.

That leaves three routes. Power Automate is the only fully automatic one, since a flow you build once sends on schedule until you turn it off. The template-plus-reminder method in classic Outlook needs no setup but stays manual, because the reminder tells you to send and you still do the sending. VBA macros and add-ins sit in between and break most often. If your company runs on Google Workspace instead, the steps for scheduling a recurring employee email in Gmail work differently.

How to Send a Recurring Email With Power Automate

Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow tool, and it works with the Microsoft 365 account you already send from. The steps below follow Microsoft's guide to running a cloud flow on a schedule. The flow runs in the cloud, so it works the same in every Outlook version.

1. Create the flow. Sign in at make.powerautomate.com, select My flows, open the Cloud flows tab, and select Create from blank.
2. Add the schedule. In the search field, enter Recurrence and add the Recurrence trigger. Set Interval and Frequency to control how often it runs. For a weekly email, use Interval = 1 and Frequency = Week. Then set a Start time.
3. Pin down the timing. In the Time zone field, pick the zone your Start time should follow, whether that is your local zone or UTC. For weekly runs, choose the day under On these days and the time under At these hours and At these minutes, say Monday at 8:00.
4. Add the email. Add an action below the trigger, find the Office 365 Outlook connector, and choose Send an email (V2). Write the subject and body as you would a normal message, and put your own address in the To field for now. The designer's buttons move between updates, so search by the action name.
5. Save and test. Save the flow and run a test. Once the email lands in your inbox, swap in the real list.

Before you build it

The flow sends through the Office 365 Outlook connector, which needs a Microsoft 365 work or school mailbox. Microsoft lists that connector as Standard in Power Automate, so this flow doesn't need a premium licence. Some organizations restrict who can create flows, so if the create options are missing or greyed out, ask IT.

Set the time zone explicitly, since a flow that fires at 8:00 UTC lands in the middle of the night for most of North America. Monthly flows run on the same date each month, so pick a date every month has, which rules out the end of the month.

To send from a team address like hr@ or comms@, use Send an email from a shared mailbox (V2) instead, which needs your account to have permission on that mailbox. Copilot in Power Automate can also build the flow from a plain-language prompt.

How to stop the recurring email

When the series has run its course, go back to My flows, select the flow, select the vertical ellipsis (⋮), and choose Turn off. To remove it for good, Microsoft's instructions to turn a flow off or delete it say to open the flow's Details page and select Delete from the menu at the top. Turning it off is the safer choice if there's any chance you will want it back next quarter.

How to Repeat an Email in Classic Outlook Without Power Automate

If you can't use Power Automate, classic Outlook can get you most of the way with a saved template and a reminder. Write the email once, then go to File > Save As and choose Outlook Template in the Save as type list. Saving and sharing Outlook templates across a team keeps the message consistent when more than one person sends it.

Next, set up a recurring calendar reminder or task for the day and time the email should go out. A recurring appointment with a reminder works well here, and the same steps you would use to send a calendar invite in Outlook apply, minus the attendees. When the reminder fires, select New Items > More Items > Choose Form, set Look In to User Templates in File System, and open your template.

This is still a manual send every time, and if you're on vacation, the email doesn't go. Microsoft's guide to sending an email based on a template also notes that changes you make to a message opened from a template aren't saved back to the template, so update the template file itself whenever the standing content changes.

VBA macros and add-ins

Classic Outlook can run VBA macros that send a message on a timer, and several add-ins promise recurring sends. Both tend to break. Macros depend on Outlook staying open on one computer and on Office updates leaving the script alone. Add-ins route your mailbox access through a third party, so check data handling and compliance with IT before installing one for an all-employee send.

How to Schedule One Email in Outlook

Scheduling a single message works differently in each version, according to Microsoft's instructions to delay or schedule sending in Outlook.

New Outlook and Outlook on the web: while composing, select the dropdown next to Send, choose Schedule send, and pick a time. The message stays in Drafts until it goes out. In new Outlook, this option isn't available for IMAP or POP accounts.

Classic Outlook: select the Message Options arrow in the Tags group, then under Delivery options check Do not deliver before (the Delay Delivery option) and choose the date and time. The message waits in the Outbox, and Outlook needs to be online and connected when the time comes.

Version-by-version details and fixes for sends that don't go out live in the full guide to scheduling an email in Outlook.

Where Recurring Outlook Emails Break for Internal Comms

A Power Automate flow solves the repetition. Three problems remain, and they show up once that recurring email becomes your company's weekly update.

The list doesn't update itself

The To line in a flow, like a contact list in Outlook, is whatever you typed into it the day you built it. New hires don't get the weekly email until someone remembers to add them, and people who left keep receiving it until someone remembers to take them off. A distribution list in Outlook helps if IT maintains it from the directory, but a list you built and edit yourself drifts a little further from reality with every hire and every departure.

No per-employee read data

For an all-staff send, Outlook gives you no reliable per-employee read report without add-ons. You can see that the flow ran, and you may get a few replies, but you can't see which employees opened last week's update and which haven't read one since spring. The limits of email tracking in Outlook matter more for a recurring send, because a weekly email is supposed to build a habit. Without data, you can't prove employees read internal comms or tell whether that habit exists.

Large lists run into sending limits

Microsoft caps how many recipients a mailbox can reach per message and per day, and a weekly all-staff email from a single account can hit those Outlook sending limits as the company grows. The usual workarounds, splitting the list into batches or across mailboxes, turn one automated send back into several flows that someone has to keep in sync.

A Free Way to Run a Weekly All-Staff Email

Cerkl Broadcast Foundations is a free-forever internal email platform, with no credit card and no contract, built for the weekly update that Outlook was never designed to carry. The weekly routine takes a couple of minutes. You duplicate last week's Blast with the new content and schedule it ahead for the right day and time zone. In exchange for that small manual step, you get the parts Outlook can't do.

• An audience that keeps itself current. Audiences sync from your HR or directory data, so new hires join on the next sync and departures drop off without anyone editing a To line.
• Scheduled sends in the right time zone. Pick the date and time in the Schedule or Send tab and use Set Custom to send in whatever time zone your employees are in.
• A read record for every send. Per-recipient Insights show who opened each send, and acknowledgments, available on every plan, let employees confirm they read a must-read message.

Foundations includes 5,000 email sends a month and 3 communicator seats, so check your headcount against that allowance before you move the weekly update over.

If your recurring email is a reminder to a handful of people, a Power Automate flow is the right tool, and you can build it this afternoon. If it is the email your whole company is supposed to read every week, set up a free Foundations account, sync your audience once, and see who opened next Monday's update.