Read, search & organize

Mail opens on your Inbox, or on All inboxes when you have more than one mailbox. Click any message to read it in the pane on the right, and it marks itself read as it opens. Every mailbox has the standard folders: Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Spam, Archive, and Trash, plus stars, labels, and bulk actions for working through a busy day. Search with operators like from: and has:attachment to find one message among thousands. On a phone the three panes collapse to one, with a Back button that returns you to the list.

Read a message

1. Open Mail from the app grid.
2. Click a folder on the left. Inbox is selected by default, or All inboxes when you have more than one mailbox.
3. Click a message in the list. It opens on the right and is marked read.
4. Use Reply, Reply all, or Forward above the message to respond. See Compose & send.

An empty folder says so in its own words, such as "Your inbox is clear" or "Trash is empty".

Follow a conversation

Opening a message loads the whole conversation as a stack of cards, oldest at the top. The newest card is expanded and marked read, and a count badge shows how many messages the thread holds. Click a collapsed card to expand it, which marks that message read too. Reply and Reply all target the newest message you received, so replies go to the other person whenever the conversation has one.

Each card has a More actions menu (the three dots) with Reply, Reply all and Forward for that one message, so you can answer an older message in the thread without opening it separately.

Quoted replies fold away

A reply usually repeats the whole conversation below the new text. When the sender's mail app marks that history as a quote, Mail folds it behind a Show quoted text link, so the new message comes first and a long thread reads as a short one. Click the link to expand it, and Hide quoted text to fold it again. A message that is nothing but quoted text, such as a plain forward, stays open, and so does a reply that marks its quote only with > characters. To always see the full text, clear Fold quoted replies under Settings → Reading.

Move between folders

Each folder does one job. Inbox holds new mail. Sent keeps a copy of what you send. Drafts lists unsent messages that save themselves as you type (see Compose & send). Spam holds mail you move there and mail from senders you block, and Archive and Trash hold filed and deleted mail. Unread counts show next to each folder. The envelope icon in the top bar counts only the unread messages in your Inbox, across every mailbox you own or share, so unread mail in Spam or Archive does not add to it.

Star and triage a message

Every row in the list has a star and a trash icon on hover. Open a message and the reader adds Archive, Mark unread, and a Move to… menu that lists your other folders. In Trash, Restore to Inbox brings a message back. Archiving takes a message out of the Inbox but keeps it. Trash holds the messages you delete, and Restore to Inbox brings one back.

Undo a move

After you archive, trash or move a message, a bar appears with Undo for about eight seconds. Click it and the message goes back to the folder it came from. The same bar covers a bulk archive or trash. If you miss it, find the message in Archive or Trash and move it back.

Triage many messages at once

1. Tick the checkbox on each row you want.
2. In the bar that appears (N selected), choose Read, Unread, Star, Archive, Trash, or Label….
3. Use the select-all checkbox to tick every message loaded in the list (50 at first, more as you scroll), or Cancel to clear the selection.

Moving ten or more messages to Trash at once asks you to confirm first, and the Undo bar still appears afterward. You can also tick a message with the x key. See Keyboard shortcuts & command menu.

Label your mail

Labels are per-mailbox colored tags you can filter by.

1. In the sidebar, find Labels and click +.
2. Name the label (up to 40 characters), pick one of the 12 colors, and click Add. It gets a colored dot.
3. Click a label to filter the open folder to messages that carry it.
4. Apply labels to selected messages with Label… in the bulk bar. Label chips show on each row.

Rename, recolor or delete a label

Point at a label and click the pencil beside it. Change the name, pick another color, and click Save, or click Delete. The colors are Graphite, Coral, Amber, Yellow, Sky, Plum, Rose, Teal, Slate, Crimson, Green and Violet.

• A mailbox cannot hold two labels with the same name. Capital letters and extra spaces do not count as a difference, so Invoices and invoices clash.
• Deleting a label takes it off every message that carried it. The messages stay where they are.
• Labels belong to the mailbox. On a shared inbox, the whole team sees the same labels.

Search your mail

Type in the search box (Search mail (Enter)) and press Enter to search the open folder. Press Escape to clear it. Combine the operators below with plain words; they all narrow the results together.

Quote multi-word values to keep the spaces: subject:"quarterly invoice". Any plain text you add matches the subject, the sender, and the message body. The star button next to the search box toggles is:starred without wiping your typed text, and the ? button shows this operator list inline. Searching inside Drafts searches your drafts by recipient, subject, and body.

Search all mail

A search covers the open folder. Under the search box, a line reads Searching and the folder name, with a Search all mail link. Click it to search every folder of that mailbox except Trash, Spam and Drafts. Each result then shows the folder it lives in, which tells you where to find it later (in Comfortable density). Click Only and the folder name to narrow the search again. The same line appears when you filter by a label, where it reads Showing, so you can see one label across all your folders.

Letters, photos and logos

Each sender has a small chip beside the name. A sender who is a contact with a photo shows that photo. Anyone else shows one or two letters from their name or address on a neutral tint, so the same sender always looks the same, and a company's logo covers the letters once your workspace has found it. Sender logos are on unless an administrator has switched them off. See Sender logos.

In Sent and Drafts, the chip and the name are the person you wrote to, as in "To: Dana Okafor and 2 more", and a draft with nobody in To reads "No recipient". A conversation still shows who wrote each message.

Block a sender

Click a sender's name, in the message header or on a conversation card, to open the sender card. It offers Copy address, Search mail from this sender, Write to this sender, and two more:

• Add to contacts saves the sender to your contacts, or shows In your contacts as their name when they are already there.
• Block sender sends all future mail from that address to Spam instead of your Inbox. The card then reads Blocked. Its mail goes to Spam., with Unblock sender to undo it.

A block files mail to Spam. It never deletes anything, so you can still find the message there. It applies to new mail, and messages already in your mailbox stay where they are. You cannot block your own address.

Blocks belong to the mailbox, so the members of a shared inbox share one list. To see everyone you have blocked, or to unblock an address, open Settings → Blocked senders (Mail settings).

Block sender and the Blocked senders tab appear when the Blocked senders feature is on for your workspace. An administrator can check Settings → Mail → Features, where the feature is listed as mail.blocklist, and switch it on or off. If it is not listed there, ask us at company@everjust.co to turn it on.

Images and privacy

Images load automatically, so most mail looks the way the sender meant it to without an extra click. If you would rather not fetch remote images, because the tracking pixels some senders hide in them can tell the sender you opened the message, turn off Load images in messages under Settings → Reading (Mail settings). With it off, the reader holds remote images back and shows a bar that reads "Remote images are blocked to protect your privacy."; click Show images to load them for one message you trust. Pictures embedded in the message itself always display. Either way, message bodies render inside a sandbox, so a script hidden in an email never runs in your workspace, and files sent with a message show as paperclip chips you click to download.

Sender logos are a separate thing from remote images. Your workspace's server looks a logo up and keeps it, so your browser never contacts a sender's site to show one. See Sender logos.

Read on your phone

On a phone or any narrow window, Mail shows one pane at a time. Tap the menu button at the top left of the list to open your folders and labels in a drawer, tap a message to read it, and use Back (or your browser's back button) to return to the list. The round Compose button at the bottom right of the list starts a new message.

Choose how dense the list is

Open Settings → Appearance and pick List density. Comfortable shows the sender, subject, a snippet of the message and any labels. Compact hides the snippet and the labels, so each row is shorter and more fit on screen. The choice is saved in this browser. See Mail settings.

Related

• Mail overview
• Compose & send
• Keyboard shortcuts & command menu
• Mail settings
• Shared team inboxes
• Mail administration & deliverability
• Sending the same message to a whole list is a job for Email Marketing.