Write and schedule an email letter
Write an email letter, choose the moment it arrives, check the summary and schedule it. With what the draft keeps, how dates work and what counts as a letter of your month.
8 minutes to read
An email letter is written today and delivered at the moment you choose: right now, or as far ahead as your plan schedules. You need an account. Every plan can send email letters, up to its number of letters per month.
- Recipients, subject and your text
- When it arrives, how it is opened, attachments and more options
- What is still missing, then review and send
Write and schedule a letter
Open the composer
Choose Compose in the menu, or open the composer. The switch at the top is set to Email.
Add the recipients
Type an address in To and press Enter, or pick one of the contacts the composer suggests. Cc / Bcc opens two more lines. Every address gets a private notice of its own. More in Add recipients and manage your contacts.
Write the letter
Fill in Subject and write your text. The recipient sees your subject when they open the letter. It is not in the notice email, which has a fixed subject line of its own.
Add what you like
The buttons under the text record a Voice or Video message, Attach a file, and open a Preview of the notice email in the layout of this letter. See attachments and recordings and layouts.
Choose when it arrives
In the delivery panel, under Arrives, press Now, one of the presets, or Or pick a date and time. Nothing is chosen for you: the letter cannot be reviewed before you choose.
Set how long the link stays open
Under How they open it, choose a time in Link stays open for. It starts at 90 days.
Review
Press Review and schedule in the bar at the bottom of the screen. When you chose Now, the button reads Review and send. While something is missing, the button is switched off and the bar says what is missing.
Confirm
Check the summary and press Schedule letter or Send now. Only then is the letter stored and counted.
Choose when it arrives
- Now
- The letter joins the delivery queue as soon as you confirm. The queue is checked every minute. A letter sent this way cannot be called back.
- Tomorrow, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years
- That far from today, at 09:00 on the clock of your device. A preset that lies beyond what your plan schedules shows a lock. Pressing it tells you how far your plan schedules, with Upgrade as the way to the plans.
- Or pick a date and time
- A calendar and a time in steps of five minutes. Days outside the range of your plan cannot be picked.
The time you choose is the time on your device. The panel shows the weekday, the time and your time zone under the date, and how far away the day is. The letter goes out at that moment, wherever the recipient lives. How far ahead you can schedule, and how many letters you have in a month, depends on your plan.
| Feature | Free | Time Master Pro | Postmaster |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email letters per month | 5 | 5,000 | 15,000 |
| Schedule ahead | 1 year | 100 years | 100 years |
How long the link stays open
The recipient reads the letter through a private link. Link stays open for decides how long that link works. You can choose 1 hour, 1 day, 5 days, 30 days, 90 days, and 1 year. The same time applies to the files of the letter. What the recipient gets and does is described in What your recipient sees.
After delivery you can give the link more time, whether the letter has files or not: open the letter in Manage Letters and press Extend link. The steps are in Extend the time. A link cannot be made shorter afterwards.
The draft in your browser
While you write, the composer saves a draft in the browser you are using. Next to the switch at the top you see Saving draft... and then Draft saved with the time. When you come back to the composer in the same browser, the draft is there again.
What the draft keeps
- The addresses in To, Cc and Bcc
- The subject and the text
- The delivery time, as long as it is still ahead when you come back
- Your choices for sending anonymously and for the public gallery
What the draft does not keep
- Attached files and recordings. After a reload you attach them again
- The time in Link stays open for, which goes back to 90 days
- The date written on the letter
- A layout you picked for this letter in Preview
- The sharing settings of the files
The paper letter has a draft of its own. If you switch to Paper letter while that side is still empty, your text is carried over.
Review and confirm
The dialog Ready to schedule? or Ready to send? shows an envelope with the first recipients and your subject. Under it is everything you chose.
| Row | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Arrives | The date and how far away it is, or Right away. |
| Opens with | Private link and access code, and how long the link stays open. |
| Attachments | The number of files and their size together. Only when the letter has files. |
| Sharing | Whether the files may be viewed, downloaded or both, and the download limit for each recipient. Only when the letter has files. |
| Options | Sent anonymously and Published in the public gallery. Only when you chose one of them. |
| Letters this month | Which letter of your month this one is. Only on a plan with a monthly number. |
Keep editing closes the dialog and nothing is sent. Schedule letter or Send now uploads the files one after the other and then stores the letter. The dialog ends with Scheduled or On its way. From there See my letters opens Manage Letters and Write another clears the composer.
More options
More options in the delivery panel opens three settings. A fourth extra, Write with AI, sits under the letter text.
- Send anonymously
- Your name and email address are not shown to the recipient. Plans that include it: Time Master Pro and Postmaster. See Send an email letter without showing your name.
- Also publish in the public gallery
- The letter is also shown to everyone, after a moderator has reviewed it. The recipient is never shown. With Publish when it is delivered switched off, a scheduled letter can appear in the gallery before your recipient gets it, and the composer warns you. See Share a letter in the public gallery.
- Date written on the letter
- The date line of the notice email. Without a date it shows the day of delivery, and the field reads Day of delivery. You can set another day, up to 1 year back, for example the day you wrote the letter. Reset removes it. The opened letter shows it as Date on the letter, next to Written, which is always the moment you confirmed the letter.
- Write with AI
- Describe the letter in a sentence or two and get a first draft of subject and text. Plans that include it: Postmaster. See Let AI write a first draft of your letter.
What counts as a letter of your month
Letters this month at the bottom of the delivery panel shows how many letters you have used and how many your plan has. A plan without a monthly number shows Unlimited letters on your plan.
- One letter counts once, however many recipients it has
- It is counted when you confirm it, not when it is delivered. That is the same for Send now and for a date years ahead
- A scheduled letter is delivered on its day, also when you have used all letters of a later month or have moved to a smaller plan by then
- A letter you delete before it is delivered gives its count back, if it was counted in the month that is still running
- The count starts again at the beginning of each calendar month
- A draft, a test email from Preview, a letter that is tried again after a failure and a paper letter are not counted. Paper letters are paid with credits
What can go wrong
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| Add a recipient to continue, Add a subject to continue, Write your letter to continue or Choose when it should arrive in the bar at the bottom | Fill in what the bar names. The review button works once nothing is missing. |
| That time has already passed. Pick a later one. | The time you chose went by while you were writing or reviewing. Pick a later time, or Now. |
| A message that says how far ahead your plan schedules | Choose an earlier date, or follow See plans in the message. |
| A notice above the letter that you have used all letters for this month | Wait for the next calendar month, follow See plans, or send a paper letter. Your draft stays in the browser meanwhile. |
| Remove the files marked in red before sending | A file is over a limit of your plan. Remove it from the list. See what happens at the limits. |
| An error after you pressed Schedule letter or Send now | The letter was not stored and not counted. The dialog is back on the summary, and the message says what failed. Press the button again. Files that were already uploaded are not uploaded a second time. |
| Your account cannot send letters right now. Contact support. | The account is blocked. Contact support. |
Good to know
- To see what a recipient gets, send a letter to your own address with Now. It counts as one letter
- For a letter many years ahead, use an address the recipient is likely to keep. The notice goes to the address you typed, and nowhere else
- If a letter cannot be delivered in the end, you get an email about it. What you can do then is in What the status of an email letter means
- In the appWrite a letterOpen the composer.
- Add recipients and manage your contactsSend one email letter to several people, and keep the addresses you write to in your contacts, so they are a few keystrokes away in the composer.
- Attach files and recordings to an email letterAdd documents, photos, or a voice or video message recorded in your browser. What your plan allows, when files are uploaded and what happens at the limits.
- What your recipient sees and how they open the letterThe notice email, the unlock page, reading the letter and getting its files, step by step. You can pass this page on to a recipient who is stuck.