Outlook: Auto reminder when forgetting attachments in messages

Author: Kelly Last Modified: 2025-04-17

You may be headache to forget adding attachments, but remind recipients to check attachments in email message body. Here we will introduce two tricks about how to automatically remind yourself when you send an email message that may be missing attachments in Microsoft Outlook.

Automatically reminder when forgetting attachments in Outlook 2013/2016

Automatically remind when forgetting attachments with an amazing tool in Outlook 👍 (All Versions Supported)

Automatically reminder when forgetting attachments in Outlook 2007 and 2010

Auto reminder when forgetting attachments in Outlook 2013/2016

Microsoft Outlook 2013 supports the feature of automatically warning you when you send an email message that may be missing attachments.

Step 1: Click the "File" > "Options".

Step 2: In the Outlook Options dialog box, click the "Mail" in the left bar.

Step 3: Go to the "Send messages" section, and keep checking the option of "Warn me when I send a message that may be missing an attachment."

Step 4: Click the "OK" button to exit this dialog box.

Then Microsoft Outlook 2013 or 2016 will warn you automatically if you may forget attachments.

For example, you enter the text of “please check attachments”, “view attachments”, etc. in your message body, but do not insert attachments in the "Attachment "field. When clicking the "Send" button, a warning dialog box will pop out to say that you may have forgotten to attach a file. See the following screen shot:

the steps of auto reminder when forgetting attachments in Outlook 2013/2016

Automatically remind when forgetting attachments with an amazing tool in Outlook 👍（All Versions Supported）

The '"Remind Me When I Send a Message That’s Missing Attachments"' feature in "Kutools for Outlook" offers a customizable solution for ensuring you never forget an attachment. You can specify keywords that, when detected in an email without an attachment, trigger a reminder before sending. This personalized approach provides a robust alternative to Outlook’s native "Remind Me When I Send A Message That's Missing Attachments" option, which sometimes fails to alert users effectively. By using Kutools, you ensure that your communications are always complete and professional.

Step 1. Enable the 'Remind Me When I Send a Message That’s Missing Attachments' feature

1. After downloading and installing Kutools for Outlook, click "Kutools Plus" > "Utilities" > "Remind Me When I Send a Message That’s Missing Attachments".

Step 2: Create the customized keywords for reminder

In the "Remind Me Before Sending" dialog box, click the" Add" button.
Input the keyword in the "Keywords" textbox.
Click "OK".
Click "OK".
Click "Yes" to enable the reminder.

the steps of auto reminding when forgetting attachments with an amazing tool in Outlook

Result

Whenever you compose an email that contains specified keywords in either the subject or the body but forget to attach a file, a warning box will pop up as soon as you click the 'Send' button, reminding you to add an attachment.

Note: To apply the "Remind Me When I Send a Message That’s Missing Attachments " utility of "Kutools for Outlook", firstly, you should download and install Kutools for Outlook.

Auto reminder when forgetting attachments in Outlook 2007 and 2010

Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010 do not support automatically warning if you may forget attachments. A VBA macro can help you realize it.

Step 1: Press the "Alt" + "F11" keys to open the "Microsoft Visual for Applications window".

Step 2: Expend the Project 1 in the left bar, and double click the "ThisOutlookSession" to open it.

Step 3: Paste the following code in the "ThisOutlookSession" window.

VBA: Warning if not insert attachment

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim retMB As Variant
Dim strBody As String
Dim iIndex As Long

On Error GoTo handleError

iIndex = InStr(Item.Body, "attach")

If iIndex > 0 And Item.Attachments.Count = 0 Then

retMB = MsgBox("You may have forgotten to attach a file." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Do you still want to continue?", vbQuestion + vbYesNo + vbMsgBoxSetForeground)
If retMB = vbNo Then Cancel = True

End If

handleError:

If Err.Number <> 0 Then
MsgBox "Outlook Attachment Alert Error: " & Err.Description, vbExclamation, "Outlook Attachment Alertr Error"
End If

End Sub

Step 4: Click the "Save" button on the toolbar.

From now on, if you add text of “attachment” in the message body but don’t attach files, the warning reminder will pop out to tell you that you may have forgotten to attach a file when you click the "Send" button. See screen shot: