Two Different Yellow Clocks in Outlook
Outlook reuses the same yellow clock glyph for two features that have nothing to do with each other, which is exactly why this question gets asked so often. Before trying to fix or explain anything, work out where the clock is sitting — that alone tells you which meaning applies.
| Where you see it | What it means | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Next to a person's name (reading pane, meeting invite, People pane, address book) | Teams presence: Away or Be Right Back | ~5 min idle, PC lock, or manual |
| On an email in your inbox message list | Snooze — the message is temporarily hidden | You (or a rule), manually |
| On a message in Drafts / Outbox | Scheduled Send — waiting to go out later | You, when composing |
The rest of this guide takes each one in turn.
Yellow Clock Next to a Name = Teams Away or Be Right Back
When the yellow clock appears beside someone's name or avatar, it isn't an Outlook status at all — it's Microsoft Teams presence, mirrored into Outlook because Outlook and Teams share one Microsoft 365 presence signal. The same yellow clock you'd see on that person's Teams profile shows up throughout Outlook: in the reading pane under their name, on their contact card in the People pane, in the To/Cc fields while you compose, and on the free/busy view in a meeting invite.
It's set one of two ways:
- Automatically — Teams detects about 5 minutes of no mouse or keyboard activity, or the person's PC locks or sleeps. This is by far the most common trigger.
- Manually — the person picked Be Right Back or Appear Away from their Teams status menu. Both use the identical yellow clock, so you can't tell an automatic Away from a deliberate one just by looking.
Full detail on when each is triggered and how long it lasts is in Teams Away status explained and how long the Teams away timer takes.
Yellow Clock on an Email = Snooze or Scheduled Send
If the yellow clock is sitting on a message rather than next to a name, it's an entirely different Outlook feature with zero connection to Teams presence:
Snooze (incoming mail)
A yellow clock icon on an email in your inbox list — often paired with a "Snoozed until…" label — means that message has been snoozed. Snoozing temporarily removes an email from your inbox view and automatically brings it back at a date and time you (or a rule) chose. It's a self-reminder tool: you're saying "don't make me deal with this now, resurface it later." The email itself is unchanged; it's just hidden from view until its snooze time is up, at which point it reappears at the top of your inbox as if newly arrived.
Scheduled Send (outgoing mail)
Less commonly, a yellow clock next to a message in your Drafts or Outbox folder means that email is a Scheduled Send — you wrote it and chose "Send later" instead of sending immediately, and Outlook is holding it until the time you set. This is a delay tool for mail you're sending, the mirror image of Snooze, which is a delay tool for mail you've received. You can open the message before it sends to edit the time or cancel it entirely.
How to tell Snooze and Scheduled Send apart
Snooze's clock sits on a message that's currently missing from your inbox (it lives in a "Snoozed" or "All Mail" view until it returns). Scheduled Send's clock sits on a message you composed, sitting in Drafts or Outbox, that hasn't left your account yet. If you're looking at something you received, it's Snooze; if you're looking at something you wrote, it's Scheduled Send.
How Long Does the Yellow Clock Stay Yellow?
For the presence meaning: automatic Away holds until Teams detects activity again — moving the mouse, typing, or unlocking the PC — at which point it flips back to Available within a few seconds. Manually set Be Right Back or Appear Away holds until the person changes it themselves; Teams doesn't clear a manual status just because they became active again, though picking up the mouse can override it depending on client version. Full behaviour, including why it sometimes seems to get "stuck," is in Teams stuck on Away.
For the Snooze meaning: the clock (and the hidden state) lasts exactly until the time you picked when you snoozed it — an hour, tomorrow morning, next week, or a custom date. For Scheduled Send: it lasts until the send time you set, or until you cancel it, whichever comes first.
If You're the One Showing a Yellow Clock and You're Not Actually Away
Outlook has no setting of its own that controls this — because the icon next to your name is Teams' presence, not Outlook's, fixing it means going to Teams, not Outlook. Two options:
- Manually override it. Click your profile picture in Teams, click your current status, and choose Available. This works immediately but reverts to Away again after another ~5 idle minutes.
- Stop it happening automatically. If you're frequently away from the keyboard but still working — reading, thinking, on a call from your phone — how to stop Teams showing Away covers every real option, from built-in Teams settings to cloud tools that hold Available on a schedule without needing your machine to stay unlocked.
For the fuller picture of every Teams presence icon — not just the yellow clock — see Microsoft Teams status icons explained, and for the pillar guide on staying Available in the first place, how to keep Teams active.