Notes on emails
Any email can carry a note: “Reply by Friday”, “Quote was too high, negotiate next time”, “Confirmation came by phone”. The note is yours alone: it is never transmitted to the mail server and is invisible to senders and other readers alike.
Adding a note
Section titled “Adding a note”Open the email and pick the note symbol in the action bar (shortcut
Cmd+Shift+N, on Windows and Linux Ctrl+Shift+N). In the list,
right-click → Add note… works too. The note appears as a colored
Mail note block above the message text, with the date it was
created and last edited.
Editing and deleting work through the buttons in the block or by right-click. There is one note per email. It can be formatted: bold, italic, lists, headings and links.
Finding notes again
Section titled “Finding notes again”Notes would be worth little if you had to hunt for the email first:
- Sidebar: the With Notes entry collects every email carrying a note, across all accounts.
- Dashboard: the Recent Notes tile shows three emails with a note, with their subject and the start of the note; one click opens the email.
- Message list: emails with a note carry a small note symbol, in card view below the sender picture, in table view in a column of its own.
- Rules and smart folders: the Has note and Note text conditions find emails with a note, the rule action Set note writes one.
On this device only
Section titled “On this device only”Because notes deliberately stay local, they do not travel to other devices via the server. If you remove an account, its notes are gone too. What that means for data storage overall is covered in Which data lives where?.
They are backed up nonetheless: the full backup includes all notes, and they come along when moving to a new machine.
If you don’t need notes, turn them off under Settings → Mails → General with Enable notes.