Communications: email, text, conversations

In this chapter - Your email accounts (Settings ▸ Email), the password check when you save it, two-step verification and app passwords, signing in with Microsoft, Google or Yahoo, secure connections and trusting a server's certificate - Your mail accounts on all your devices: what moves and what does not, allowing a new computer with the code, unlocking with your TechieCRM password, the key change after a device is removed, resetting, and the Your devices section - Sending an email from a client record, and where it is filed - Email to many people, one at a time: who receives it, the message, the daily limit, progress, the summary, and carrying on after a restart - Sending a text (SMS) through the cloud - Conversations on the web portal - Messages (texts) and notifications - Notifications - The Email window: all your inboxes in one list, conversations, folders, reading and search

---

Your email accounts

Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email: add your accounts. (The Configuration window's Email page, Setup ▸ Administration ▸ Configuration, lists the accounts you have, with whether each password is saved, and its Open Settings > Email button brings you here; before you sign in it only says that email accounts belong to each person. Administrator Guide A14, The Email page.) Add your accounts (address, display name, provider (IMAP, POP3, Gmail, Outlook…, IMAP/POP host/port for reading, SMTP host/port for sending, username, password, stored encrypted). Mark one Default for sending; you can add several. The Email window reads every account that has Read from this account ticked. The Password column shows Missing until a password is entered. (The Role and Default for receiving settings are hidden for now, October 2026: nothing uses them yet. Values saved earlier are kept.) - Import Local Accounts… (every computer: Mac, Windows and Linux; October 2026): copies the accounts the mail programs on this computer already know, so you do not type their servers. See Importing the accounts on this computer below. It replaced the Mac-only Import from Mail.app… button. - POP accounts: mail stays on the mail server when TechieCRM downloads it, so your phone and any other mail program on the account can still download every message TechieCRM has downloaded. The account editor shows Leave messages on the server (POP) ticked and greyed: it is always on, and there is no setting that removes mail after downloading. Deleting a POP message in the Email window deletes it from the mail server (after 10 seconds in which you can click Undo), so mail programs that check the account after that will not download it. Mail they had already downloaded stays with them. See Reading, flags, deleting and moving. - Sync to Cloud (changed October 2026): shares your accounts' addresses and server settings with the TechieCRM cloud, for your own TechieCRM ID only, so your other computers can be set up from them later. Passwords and sign-ins (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo) stay on this computer: the TechieCRM cloud does not keep your mail passwords at all, in any form, and earlier copies were erased. Nobody else in your office can see or change your accounts in the cloud, whatever licence they hold. The cloud keeps your accounts only when this computer has signed in with a TechieCRM ID that the cloud recognises; otherwise the button says The cloud kept nothing and nothing is stored. The same sharing also happens after every save while the cloud is connected. Mail itself never moves between computers: each one reads your mailbox from the mail server. When your workspace has mail account sync switched on, your accounts, passwords included, also follow you to your own devices, sealed so that the cloud cannot read them: see Your mail accounts on all your devices below. - Test Connection: select an account and click it. TechieCRM connects to the account's incoming server and its outgoing server, checks each server's security certificate, signs in and leaves; nothing is read, sent or changed. The result names each server and says whether its certificate was verified or is one you chose to trust. When a server refuses the password, the result also says what that provider needs (see Two-step verification and app passwords below), and the Sign-in column records the incoming server's answer.

Your mail accounts on all your devices

October 2026. Works once TechieCRM has switched mail account sync on for your workspace; until then nothing in this section appears and your accounts stay on each computer as before.

Set up your mail accounts once and they follow you to your other computers and your phone. What moves: each account's address, display name, servers, ports, user name, password, reply-to, other addresses, and which server certificates you chose to trust; and, with them, your signatures, the default signature for each address and your Scheduled emails choice (see Signatures and Sending an email later below). What never moves: mail itself (each device reads your mailbox from the mail server; an email that matters is filed on a client), the Microsoft, Google or Yahoo sign-in itself (see one tap below), accounts of type macOS Mail (they drive one Mac's Mail app), and this computer's own switches (Read from this account, Send from this account, the check interval).

Only you can open them. Your accounts are sealed with a key that exists only on your own allowed devices. The TechieCRM cloud keeps the sealed copy and the list of your addresses, and cannot read a password; neither can your administrator or anyone else in your office, whatever licence they hold. Sign in to the TechieCRM cloud on this computer (Tools ▸ Cloud ▸ Cloud Connection, or the MongoDB sign-in) and the first computer you set your accounts up on shares them at its next check-in; nothing to click.

Allowing a new computer. Sign in on the new computer. A window Waiting for approval shows a six-digit code and the addresses that are waiting. Open TechieCRM on one of your other devices: it shows Allow this device? with the device's name and the same code. Check the two codes match and press Allow; the accounts arrive on the new computer within a few seconds, passwords included, and nothing else needs typing. If the request is not yours, press Not Me: it signs that device out of your TechieCRM ID at once (and change your TechieCRM password afterwards). You also receive an email whenever a device asks. A request is open for 24 hours; Not Now closes the window (the rest of TechieCRM works; Show Code in Settings ▸ Email brings it back).

When none of your other devices is on. Press Use TechieCRM Password on the waiting window and type your TechieCRM password: it unlocks your mail accounts here. You receive an email saying your mail accounts were unlocked on a new device, and the cloud allows five attempts an hour. This works once one of your devices has stored the unlock, which happens by itself the first time it shares after you signed in; if it has not yet, the button says so and you allow the computer from another device. When you change your TechieCRM password, the device you are on renews the unlock at its next sync.

One tap for Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. A signed-in account arrives with everything filled in but without its sign-in: the providers tie a sign-in to the program that made it. Your devices lists it under Sign in to finish; press Sign in with Microsoft / Google / Yahoo… once on the new computer and it is working. A POP account arrives with Read from this account switched off: two devices downloading one POP mailbox lose mail when one deletes from the server, so turn on Leave a copy on the server at your provider before you switch it on here.

When the same account differs on two devices, TechieCRM takes the most recently changed copy. When it cannot tell, it asks: This computer has a different password or server settings for ann@example.com than your other devices, with Use This One Everywhere (send this computer's copy to the others) or Use the Other One Here. Nothing is replaced silently.

Removing a lost device. In Settings ▸ Email ▸ Your devices, select the device and press Remove Device (or use My Devices on the web portal, which also erases its TechieCRM data the next time it connects). The device is signed out at once, and the next of your devices to open changes the key that protects your accounts, so the removed device can open nothing new. That device may still know the passwords it had, so TechieCRM then shows Change these mail passwords: the accounts whose passwords to change at your mail provider, and the signed-in accounts for which to remove TechieCRM's access in the provider's security page. Copy puts the list on the clipboard.

Starting over. Reset Mail Accounts on Every Device (Settings ▸ Email ▸ Your devices) erases the shared copy on the cloud for every one of your devices, after asking for a reason. This computer keeps its accounts and shares them again right away; each of your other devices keeps its own accounts and asks Your mail accounts were reset from "Office PC" on … Keep the accounts on this device and share them again? with Share Again and Keep Here Only (and Share Again stays available in Settings). A root administrator of TechieCRM can run the same reset for you, with a reason, and so can a password reset through Forgot password?; a reset never reveals anything to whoever ran it.

Source CRM (SQL) logins. Your accounts are kept under your login. A login that is not yet linked to your TechieCRM ID keeps its accounts on that computer, and Your devices says: Link your TechieCRM ID to use these mail accounts on your other devices. Links are made on the TechieCRM web portal (an administrator links your login to your TechieCRM ID under Users), and reach this computer with the next sync; see Your two email addresses, and the link between your two user IDs in Users, security and login.

The Your devices section (Settings ▸ Email, under the sign-in buttons) shows a status line (whether this computer shares, the key version, how many devices hold it, what needs you), the devices signed in with your ID (this computer marked), the requests waiting with Allow and Not Me, and Refresh, Show Code and Use TechieCRM Password while this computer waits, Sign Out This Computer (stop sharing from here; your accounts stay), Remove Device, Share Again and Reset Mail Accounts on Every Device. Everything it does runs in the background; the window never waits on the cloud.

Importing the accounts on this computer

Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email ▸ Import Local Accounts… looks in the mail programs on this computer, lists every email account they know, and copies the ones you tick into TechieCRM: the address, your display name, IMAP or POP, the incoming and outgoing servers with their ports and security, and the user name. It never reads or copies a password.

Where it looks:

Computer	Mail programs read	Not readable (named in the list's notes when installed)
Mac	Mail (the first time, macOS asks you to allow TechieCRM to control Mail; allow it, or Mail is skipped with the reason), Thunderbird	Outlook for Mac keeps its accounts in its own protected storage
Windows	Outlook (the classic Outlook in Microsoft 365 / Office: its IMAP and POP accounts), Thunderbird	Windows Mail and the new Outlook keep their accounts in a private database
Linux	Thunderbird (including the Snap and Flatpak versions), Evolution	Geary and KMail

Exchange and Microsoft 365 accounts in Outlook or Mail have no IMAP or POP server to copy; they are left out (the notes say how many). Add them with Sign in with Microsoft…. An account that two programs know (for example Mail and Thunderbird) is listed once, with both names in Found in.

The window that opens lists each account with a tick box:

Column	What it shows
Address	The account's address. Point at the row to see why it is marked as it is, and any other addresses the program sends from on that account (they are copied into Other addresses).
Found in	The mail program, or programs, that know it.
Incoming / Outgoing	The servers, for example IMAP imap.gmail.com:993, SSL and SMTP smtp.gmail.com:465, SSL.
In TechieCRM	New (it will be added), Update (it is already here and its servers or user name will be brought up to date), Already the same, or Left as it is.

New and Update rows are ticked. Already the same and Left as it is rows are greyed and cannot be ticked. An account is left as it is when it is signed in with Microsoft, Google or Yahoo here (the sign-in is never replaced), when it is set up here as another kind of account, when it is IMAP here and POP in the other program (or the other way round), or when its address is already one of another account's Other addresses. Untick any you do not want, or use Select All / Select None, then click Import; Cancel copies nothing.

Importing never makes a second copy of an account: the address decides. Updating an account changes only its servers, ports, security and user name (and fills in a blank display name, and adds new Other addresses); its password, its send and read switches and your defaults stay as they are. If an updated server name changed, a certificate you had chosen to trust for that server is no longer trusted (see Secure connections and the server's security certificate). New accounts have reading on when they have an incoming server and sending on when they have an outgoing one. When you had no default sending or receiving account, the first one becomes the default.

Afterwards a message says how many were added and updated, which were left as they were and why, and for each imported account how to give it its password: - Sign in with Google… / Microsoft… / Yahoo… when this version can sign in with that provider; - otherwise an app password for Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and iCloud (their normal password is refused; see Two-step verification and app passwords); - otherwise Edit… and the account's normal password.

The first new account is selected in the list, so Edit… opens it. When you save its password, TechieCRM signs in to check it and shows the result in the Sign-in column (see Checking the password when you save it).

When nothing is found, the message lists each mail program it looked for and why it gave nothing (not installed, no accounts, or permission refused).

Which accounts are working: green and red addresses

The address of each account in the list is coloured so you can see at a glance which accounts work:

Address colour	Meaning
Green	The last sign-in check succeeded (the check when you saved the password, or Test Connection).
Red	The account is not working: the notification bell has an open problem for it (a refused password, a password needed, a sign-in that ended, a certificate problem, a server that cannot be reached), or its last sign-in check failed.
Normal text	The sign-in has not been checked yet, or the last check could not reach the server. Select the account and click Test Connection to check it.

Point at an address to read the same in words: Signed in, checked 2026-10-11 14:05, or the problem the notification bell reports. When both exist, the newer one decides: a successful Test Connection after a problem turns the address green, and the tooltip says the bell still lists the earlier problem until the next check for new mail clears it. The last check of each account is kept on this computer, so the colours are still there the next time you open Settings. The green and red are the theme's own status colours and change with the theme.

Resizing Settings

Drag the corner of the Settings window to make it larger: the page and its panels grow with it, so the Email accounts list shows every column. The columns are as wide as their heading or their contents, and Address takes the rest of the width. When the window is too narrow for a row of buttons, the buttons move onto a second line instead of cutting their names off, and long sentences wrap.

Checking the password when you save it

When you click OK in Add… or Edit… with a new or changed password, TechieCRM saves the password first and then signs in to the account's incoming server to check it (its outgoing server when it has no incoming one). The check runs in the background: you can keep working in Settings, or close it, while the server answers.

• The account's Sign-in column says Checking…, then the result: Signed in, Refused, Certificate problem, Not checked (no connection) or Problem. Point at it for the full sentence.
• A panel under the list says the same in words: Signed in: … The password works., or the real reason. For a refused password it says what to do and offers buttons: the provider's own app-password page (opens in your web browser), Sign in with … when that sign-in is available in your version, and Edit… to type a different password. Hide closes the panel; the Sign-in column keeps the result.
• The password is kept either way. If you are offline, or the server cannot be reached, the panel says the sign-in could not be checked; TechieCRM signs in when the server can be reached, and Test Connection checks it again.
• The server's security certificate is checked before the password is sent, as for every connection. A certificate problem stops the check without sending the password: click Test Connection to see the certificate (see Trusting a server's certificate).
• Opening the account again with Edit… shows the last result at the top of the window. The last result of each account is kept on this computer (it also colours the address green or red, see above); a refused account is also listed on the notification bell by the next mail check, as before.
• Saving without typing a password (the field left as (unchanged)) does not check anything, and an account signed in with Microsoft, Google or Yahoo is never checked this way (it does not use a password).

Two-step verification and app passwords

Most large providers do not accept your normal password from a mail program once two-step verification (2-step sign-in, 2FA) is on for the account. You then need either the provider's own sign-in (Sign in with Google / Microsoft / Yahoo, below) or an app password: a long password the provider makes for one program, which you type into TechieCRM instead of your normal one. TechieCRM recognises the provider from the address, and for your own domain from the incoming and outgoing server names, and says under Password in Add… / Edit… what it needs (for example Gmail needs an app password here (2-step verification), not your normal password).

Your address or servers	What works	Where to get an app password
@gmail.com, @googlemail.com	Sign in with Google, or an app password. Google no longer accepts your normal Google password from mail programs.	myaccount.google.com/apppasswords (needs 2-Step Verification; not offered with security keys only or Advanced Protection)
Your own domain on imap.gmail.com / smtp.gmail.com (Google Workspace)	As Gmail. Your administrator decides whether app passwords are allowed.	myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
@outlook.com, @hotmail.…, @live.…, @msn.com	An app password when two-step verification is on (or Sign in with Microsoft)	Microsoft account, Advanced security options, App passwords (the panel's button opens it)
Your own domain on outlook.office365.com / smtp.office365.com (Microsoft 365, work or school)	Only Sign in with Microsoft. Microsoft has turned off password sign-in for IMAP and POP in every Microsoft 365 organization, so no password or app password works.	none
@yahoo.…, @ymail.com, @rocketmail.com	An app password (or Sign in with Yahoo)	login.yahoo.com/account/security, External connections, Create app password
@icloud.com, @me.com, @mac.com	An app-specific password	account.apple.com, Sign-In and Security, App-Specific Passwords

To use an app password: create it on the provider's page (the panel's button opens the page in your browser), copy it, then in Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email select the account, click Edit…, paste it as the Password and click OK. TechieCRM checks it straight away.

If your own domain's mail is hosted by Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 but its servers in the account are your own names (for example mail.yourcompany.com), TechieCRM cannot tell the provider and gives general advice; with the provider's server names typed in, it can say exactly what is needed.

Sign in with … not available yet. TechieCRM only offers a Sign in with … button in the advice when that sign-in is available in your version. Until then the advice says Sign in with … is not available in this version of TechieCRM yet and explains the app password instead. For a Microsoft 365 mailbox that means TechieCRM cannot read or send its mail until Sign in with Microsoft is available; the password you typed is kept but cannot be used.

Signing in with Microsoft, Google or Yahoo

Some mailboxes connect by signing in instead of with a password. Microsoft 365 work and school mailboxes usually must (they no longer accept a password from mail programs); Google and Yahoo accept either a sign-in or an app password. Under the accounts list are three buttons: Sign in with Microsoft…, Sign in with Google… and Sign in with Yahoo….

1. Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email, click the button for your provider.
2. Type the email address you sign in with (optional: you can also choose the account on the provider's page) and click OK.
3. Your web browser opens the provider's own sign-in page. Sign in there as you normally do, including any two-step verification code, and allow TechieCRM to read and send your mail. You type your password on the provider's page, never into TechieCRM.
4. The browser shows You are signed in. You can close this tab and go back to TechieCRM. TechieCRM says Signed in as …, and the account appears in the list with the provider type (for example oauth_google) and Signed in (Google) in the Password column.

While TechieCRM waits, a small window says Finish signing in … in your web browser. Click Cancel there to stop; if nothing happens for 5 minutes the sign-in stops by itself and you can start it again.

What each provider asks you to allow:

Provider	What you allow	Servers TechieCRM then uses
Microsoft	read and change your mail (IMAP), send mail as you (SMTP), stay signed in, and your email address	outlook.office365.com (incoming), smtp.office365.com port 587 (outgoing)
Google	read, compose, send and delete your Gmail, and your email address	imap.gmail.com (incoming), smtp.gmail.com port 587 (outgoing)
Yahoo	read and write your Yahoo Mail	imap.mail.yahoo.com (incoming), smtp.mail.yahoo.com port 465 (outgoing)

Good to know: - No new password is kept. TechieCRM keeps the sign-in (a token from the provider), encrypted the same way passwords are, and renews it by itself when it runs out. The account's Password field shows Signed in with …, no password needed, and its provider cannot be changed in Edit… (delete the account and add it again to use an app password instead). - Signing in to an account you already have (same address) turns it into a signed-in account: its servers become the provider's, and its stored password is kept, encrypted, as a fallback. The account uses the sign-in while it works and never tries the password meanwhile; if the sign-in is removed, the account goes back to signing in with that password on the same servers. - Sign in again. If you withdraw TechieCRM's access in your Microsoft, Google or Yahoo account settings, change your password, or the provider ends the sign-in, TechieCRM says Your … sign-in for … has ended or was withdrawn. Sign in again and stops reading and sending for that account. Click the same Sign in with … button and sign in with the same address; the account keeps its place and settings. - Remove Sign-in. To make TechieCRM forget a sign-in (to sign in again from scratch, or to connect a different Microsoft, Google or Yahoo account), select the account in Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email and click Remove Sign-in (beside the three sign-in buttons; it is greyed out unless the selected account is signed in). TechieCRM asks first. Yes deletes the stored sign-in on this computer and in your cloud copy of the account; the account itself stays in the list on the same servers. If the account had a password before you signed in, that password is used again; otherwise the Password column reads Missing and the account cannot read or send until you click Sign in with … again or enter a password with Edit…. To switch to another account, sign in with the other address afterwards (and Delete the old account if you no longer want it). Removing the sign-in does not withdraw TechieCRM's access in your Microsoft, Google or Yahoo account; do that in the provider's own security settings if you want to. - Not available yet. Each provider has to approve TechieCRM before its button works (Google and Yahoo check the app first; some companies' Microsoft 365 administrators must allow it for their staff). Until then the button says Sign in with … is not available in this version of TechieCRM yet: connect the account with an app password instead (create one in your provider account's security settings, then Add… and type it as the password). App passwords keep working after the sign-in buttons arrive. - Test Connection works for signed-in accounts too: it renews the sign-in if needed and signs in to both servers.

Secure connections and the server's security certificate

When an account uses a secure connection (Use SSL for incoming mail, Use TLS for outgoing mail), TechieCRM checks the mail server's security certificate every time it connects, for reading, sending, the Email window and monitoring emails alike. The certificate must be issued by an authority your computer trusts, must still be valid, and must name the server you typed in the account. If any of that fails, TechieCRM stops before signing in, so your password is not sent, and tells you why:

What the message says	What it means
the certificate has expired	The server's certificate ran out (the date is shown). The provider has to renew it.
the certificate is not valid yet	Its start date is in the future; often your computer's clock is wrong.
the certificate is self-signed	The server vouches for itself; no trusted authority issued it. Common on home and office servers.
issued by an authority this computer does not know	Often a company's own certificate authority.
the certificate is for a different name	The certificate names another server than the one in your account. Small hosting companies often use a certificate for their own server name (for example mail.yourhost.example) rather than your domain: try typing that server name in the account first.
has changed since you chose to trust it	See Trusting a server's certificate below.

When a secure connection is set on port 143 (IMAP) or 110 (POP), TechieCRM requires the server to switch to a secure connection and does not send your password otherwise. The same applies to outgoing mail on port 587 with Use TLS ticked.

Trusting a server's certificate

If you know the server and expect its certificate, you can trust that certificate for one account:

1. Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email, select the account, click Test Connection.
2. When a certificate cannot be verified, a window shows the server and port, who the certificate was issued to and issued by, the dates it is valid from and valid until, the names it covers, and its SHA-256 fingerprint. If you are not sure, ask your email provider and compare the fingerprint with theirs.
3. Click Trust This Certificate. TechieCRM tests the connection again and reports the result.

When the Email window's mail check meets a certificate that cannot be verified, the problem is listed on the notification bell (see When an account has a problem); click Open Email Settings on its row, select the account and click Test Connection to see the certificate and trust it. The other accounts keep working meanwhile.

Trust is given to that one certificate, for that one account, and separately for its incoming and outgoing server; the Certificates column of the accounts list shows Checked or Trusted: incoming / outgoing. If the server later shows a different certificate, TechieCRM checks it normally again: a properly issued one simply works, and anything else is refused with the message has changed since you chose to trust it. A certificate that changes without warning can mean someone is trying to intercept your mail, so ask your provider before trusting the new one. Changing an account's server name also removes the trust for that server.

To stop trusting a certificate: select the account, click Edit…, and under Trusted server certificates click Stop Trusting next to the server. Its certificate is checked normally from then on.

Send Email…

Clients / Related ▸ right-click ▸ Send Email… (or ribbon Compose Email, or Interactions ▸ right-click ▸ Add ▸ Email, for the current client): the compose window opens prefilled with the client's address and linked to the client. It is the same window as New Message in the Email window and as a reply or forward, so everything below applies everywhere you write an email. Send goes out through your own account (not the cloud). Afterwards TechieCRM: 1. files the email on the client's record the way your source CRM does: it appears in the client's Documents as an Email Message with a paired note ("An email has been sent to …"), so classic users of the source CRM see it too; 2. keeps a copy in the client's Interactions (type Communications), which syncs to the cloud. If no send account is set up, the window says so and offers to open Settings ▸ Email.

The compose window

(14 Oct 2026) The window follows the look of a modern mail program: a row of rounded buttons at the top, the address and subject lines as plain rows separated by thin lines, the message below, and your attachments as small tags at the bottom. Every colour comes from your Theme, so in a dark theme the message area is dark with light text, and it changes at once when you change Theme, Primary or Accent in Settings.

The top row, left to right: - Cancel closes the message without sending it (a reply opened in place goes back to the message you were reading). If you have written something, TechieCRM asks first. - Aa shows or hides the format bar (font, size, bold, italic, underline, colours, lists, alignment, insert). It is hidden when you first open the window; your choice is remembered. - Emoji & Symbols (the smiling face) opens the emoji picker: on a Mac the system's own Emoji & Symbols panel, elsewhere a small grid of common emoji. Whatever you pick goes in at the cursor. - Fields (the lines icon) chooses which address lines are shown: Cc Address Field, Bcc Address Field, Reply-To Address Field and Priority Field. Cc, Bcc and Priority are on at first; Reply-To is off. The choice is remembered. A Cc or Bcc that was filled in for you (a reply all, for example) is always shown. - Attach (the paper clip): Attach Files… opens the file chooser. On a reply or forward, Include Original Attachments adds the files that came with the message you are answering (from the Email window, and from Email Details when you answer an email filed on a client). It is greyed, with the reason, when there are none, when they are already attached (a forward carries them), or when the filed copy's attachments cannot be read. - Send options (the clock arrow): Send Now (the same as the round Send button and Ctrl+Enter, Cmd+Enter on a Mac), Send 8:00 AM Tomorrow and Send Later… (see Sending an email later below). On a Mac, Send via Mail.app is here too (see below). - The round green Send button at the right sends the message. While TechieCRM hands the message to your mail server, a small ring of turning dots (in your Primary and Accent colours) takes the button's place; the window stays responsive, but Send, the Send options, Cancel and To Many are greyed and the window cannot be closed until it finishes. The ring disappears when the message has gone (the window closes) or when sending failed (the reason is shown and the message is left as it was, so you can try again). (18 Oct 2026; before, the pointer turned into a still wait cursor.) A reply written in the Email window's reading pane cannot be left while it is being sent either: choosing another message or mailbox, another Reply, or Cancel keeps you on it and the header says Sending… wait a moment. When it has gone, the header says Your reply was sent. as usual (also if you signed out meanwhile). - Long hover texts in the compose window show in short lines, not across the screen.

The rows: To (with To Many, a picture of a group of people, at its right, see below), Cc, Bcc, Reply-To (when shown), Subject with the priority pop-up at its right (High, Normal, Low: High and Low travel with the email as the usual priority headers, so the recipient's mail program flags it; Normal sends nothing extra), and From, the account the email goes out from, with the Signature pop-up at its right (see Signatures below).

Attaching by drag and drop. Drop files from the Finder or File Explorer anywhere on the window, including the message itself or an address line: they are attached. A dropped or pasted picture is attached as a file too, not placed in the text (a picture in the text would not reach the recipient). Each attachment is a tag at the bottom with its name and size; the small x on the tag removes it. Dropping or pasting text still puts the text in the message.

If a link to a file is left in the message. A message that contains a link to a file on your computer or on the office network (a file:// link, or a \\server\share path) would reach the recipient as text they cannot open. When you click Send, TechieCRM lists those links and offers Attach the files (the files that exist are attached and the links removed from the message), Send as is, or Cancel.

Pasting from another program. Text pasted from another program keeps bold, italic, underline, lists, links and tables, but loses its colours, font and size, so it takes the message's own: text copied from a dark-mode mail program (white on black) is readable here and for the recipient. Colours you choose yourself with the format bar's colour buttons are kept, as is anything you copy and paste within TechieCRM's own editors. Whatever your Theme shows you, the email is sent so that it reads on the white page every mail program uses: a text colour that would be invisible on white is left out, and the message's font is one every mail program has.

Send via Mail.app (Mac). In the Send options menu, tick Send via Mail.app to hand the message to macOS Mail, which sends it from the chosen From address with its own account (no password needed in TechieCRM). The tick is remembered. Mail.app does not carry the priority. Scheduled emails never go through Mail.app (see the next section).

A copy in your Sent folder. (20 Oct 2026) Once the mail server has accepted your message, TechieCRM puts a copy of it, exactly as sent and marked read, in the account's Sent folder on the mail server (the same thing a mail program does), so it is in Sent in TechieCRM, in your webmail and in every other mail program you use. The copy keeps who got the blind copy (Bcc); the recipients never see that line. It shows in TechieCRM's Sent list straight away (or within a few seconds, after TechieCRM looks at the account again). No copy is made when: - the account is a Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo or iCloud account: their servers keep the copy themselves, and a second one would show every message twice (Yahoo and iCloud were added on 20 Oct 2026); - the account reads mail with POP (there is no Sent folder on the server), or does not read mail in TechieCRM at all; - you sent it via Mail.app (Mail.app keeps its own copy).

If the copy cannot be made (the server refused it, or could not be reached), the email was still sent; the recipients have it.

Sending an email later

(15 Oct 2026) Two items in the Send options menu (the clock arrow) put the message in your Scheduled list instead of sending it now. TechieCRM sends it at that time, from the From account you chose, with your own email sign-in, exactly as Send Now would have.

• Send 8:00 AM Tomorrow sends it at 8:00 in the morning on the next calendar day, in your time zone. Point at the item to see the day, for example "Sends Friday 16 October, 8:00 AM."
• Send Later… opens a small window where you choose the Date and the Time. Below them it shows your Time zone (this computer's, for example "America/St_Johns (UTC-02:30)") and says when the email will be sent. Click Schedule to put it in the list, or Cancel to go back to the message.

When the email is in the list, the compose window closes and the main window's status line says "Scheduled for Friday 16 October, 8:00 AM." Everything you wrote is kept as it is: To, Cc, Bcc, Reply-To, the priority, the subject, the message with its signature, and the attachments. If the message was opened from a client (Send Email… on a client), it is filed on that client right after it is sent, the same way Send Now files it. A reply or forward written in Email Details on a client (Interactions) is filed on every entry the original email is filed on, the same entries Send Now from that window files it on.

A scheduled reply is saved like any reply (20 Oct 2026). When a scheduled Reply, Reply All or Forward goes (from Email Details, or a reply scheduled from the Email window), it is also saved on the client the To address belongs to, and a reply from the Email window on the entries the email you answered is filed on, exactly as Where your reply is saved (below) describes for a reply sent at once: one stored email, a link per entry. Nobody may be at the computer when it goes, so instead of asking, TechieCRM puts the question on the notification bell: A scheduled reply went to an address no client has, with the address and the button Save the reply on a client, which asks the usual question (Add this address to a client, Create a client, Not now). Answering closes the notification; Not now closes it too, and you can still file the reply from All Sent. A File Again in the Scheduled list never asks again. A forward scheduled from the Email window is filed only on what you chose when scheduling it.

Scheduled emails only send while TechieCRM is open on one of your computers. If none is open at the time, the email goes when you next open TechieCRM. After 24 hours it waits for you to decide. You can open TechieCRM on any computer where you are signed in with the same mail account; the list is shared, and the same email is never sent twice. When you open TechieCRM, emails whose time has passed while it was closed are sent straight away, oldest first. An email more than 24 hours late is not sent on its own: it is marked "Missed its time" and the notification bell tells you.

Closing TechieCRM with emails still to send. If an email in your list is due before this time tomorrow, closing TechieCRM asks: "2 scheduled emails are due before this time tomorrow. They only send while TechieCRM is open. Close anyway?" Choose Close or Keep Open. Tick Don't ask again to stop the question; you can turn it back on in Settings, Email, Scheduled emails.

The Scheduled emails setting follows you (15 Oct 2026, once mail account sync is switched on for your workspace). Ask before closing TechieCRM when scheduled emails are due within 24 hours (and the Don't ask again tick, which turns it off) is your choice on every computer you have allowed, not one per computer: turn it off on one and the others stop asking too. A computer where you never changed it takes the choice you made elsewhere without asking; if you change it differently on two computers before they catch up, TechieCRM asks which one to keep (Send Later choices), as for signatures. Only you see it. If Settings ▸ Email is open when the choice arrives from another computer, the tick box changes at once (16 Oct 2026). The send time (8:00 AM tomorrow) and how long the list keeps finished emails are the same for everyone and are not settings.

What can stop it, and why: - Choose a time from 1 minute to 366 days from now. A time in the past, or less than a minute away, is refused in the window, with that reason. - At most 25 MB with the attachments. The list is kept in your office database, so a larger email is refused, with its size. - Up to 500 waiting emails each, and 2 GB for the whole office: the list answers with the reason when one more would not fit; send or cancel some first. - Clocks changing. A time that does not exist because the clocks go forward (2:30 AM on the spring change) moves to the first minute after it, and the window says so. A time that happens twice in the autumn uses the first one, and the window says so.

Send via Mail.app. Scheduled emails are always sent by TechieCRM itself, even when Send via Mail.app is ticked. The Send Later window and the confirmation say "Scheduled emails are sent by TechieCRM, not by Mail." So you need your mail account set up in Settings, Email, with its outgoing server, to schedule an email.

When the two items are greyed. Point at them to see why: - "Scheduled emails are sent by TechieCRM itself. Add your mail account in Settings, Email to use Send Later." You have no mail account TechieCRM can send from on this computer. - "Sign in to your office database to schedule email." Your office keeps its data in its own database and TechieCRM is not signed in to it right now.

If you choose a From address that has no outgoing server set up in TechieCRM on this computer, TechieCRM says so when you schedule and asks you to choose another or set it up. Email to Many does not offer scheduling.

Without an active license. TechieCRM must be allowed to send email when the time comes, the same check Send Now makes. If TechieCRM is open without an active license (it is then read-only), or your plan or your user ID does not allow sending email, your scheduled emails are held: nothing is sent, nothing is marked as failed, and the Scheduled list and the notification bell say why ("TechieCRM is read-only because there is no active license. Scheduled emails wait until a license is active."). Once TechieCRM may send again, the usual rule applies: an email less than 24 hours past its time is sent straight away; an older one is marked "Missed its time" and waits for you.

To see, change, send now or cancel your scheduled emails, use the Scheduled list (next section).

Scheduled: emails waiting to be sent

(15 Oct 2026) The Scheduled list shows every email you scheduled, from all your computers: one list for you, kept in your office database (or this computer's TechieCRM database in an office that uses only TechieCRM). Sent and cancelled emails stay in the list for 30 days. Nobody else sees your list.

Opening it. Three ways: - In the Email window, click the Scheduled button in the header (a small clock, just before the notices and the search field). It has no words on it: point at it to see how many emails are waiting, for example Scheduled (3). While emails are waiting the button is filled with your theme's main colour (green unless you chose another colour in Settings); when nothing is waiting it is grey and the hover text says Scheduled and Nothing is scheduled to be sent; you can still click it to open the (empty) list. The number is the same one the sidebar shows. It changes a moment after you schedule or change an email in TechieCRM, when you send, cancel or change one in the Scheduled list, and at least every 30 seconds while TechieCRM is open (emails scheduled on your other computers are counted then). In a narrow window it may move into the header's » menu, listed there as Scheduled (3). - In the Email window, show the mailbox sidebar (the sidebar button at the left of the header) and click Scheduled at the bottom. The number beside it is how many emails are waiting. - A scheduled email that needs you (missed its time, not sent, may have been sent, not filed, or held) raises a notice on the notification bell; its Open the Scheduled list button opens it.

The list opens in a window of its own, which you can leave open while you work. It reads the list again every 30 seconds while it is open, and straight after each change; Refresh reads it now.

The columns: - To and Subject of the email ("(erased)" once it was cancelled: its text is gone). - Send At: the date and time, in this computer's time zone. If you chose the time in another time zone, that time is added, for example "Friday 16 October, 6:30 AM (8:00 AM St Johns time)". - From: the address it is sent from. - Status, with a coloured dot:

Status	What it means
Scheduled	Waiting for its time.
Being edited	Open in a compose window (on this or another of your computers). It is not sent while it is open.
Sending from FRONTDESK	That computer is sending it now. It cannot be changed until it is done.
Sent	The mail server accepted it.
Will try again at 8:05 AM	A passing problem (the server was busy, the connection dropped before the email was handed over). TechieCRM tries again at that time, for up to 24 hours.
Needs you to sign in again	The mail server refused your sign-in. Sign in again in Settings, Email.
Not sent: (reason)	It could not be sent, for the reason shown (every recipient refused, the 24 hours ran out, ...).
May have been sent	TechieCRM stopped, or lost the connection, while it was handing the email over. It may have gone out. It is never sent again unless you say so.
Missed its time	TechieCRM was not open within 24 hours of its time. It waits for you to decide.
Cancelled	You cancelled it.
Waiting: (reason)	Its time has come but this computer does not send it now: TechieCRM is read-only, or "ann@acme.example is not set up in TechieCRM on this computer" (open TechieCRM on a computer where it is set up, or add it in Settings, Email).

Click an email to see its details under the list: its status, the next try time, the last error the mail server gave, how many attempts were made, whether it was filed, the computer it was scheduled on and, once sent, when and from which computer.

While TechieCRM sends several at once (for example after it was closed over a weekend), the top of the list says "Sending 3 of 40". When sending is held (no active license), the top of the list says "Not sending right now." and why.

The buttons. Each works on the selected email and is greyed when it does not apply; point at a greyed button to see why. - Edit opens the email in the compose window, with a line at the top saying when it is scheduled. While it is open, the email is "Being edited" and is never sent; TechieCRM keeps it for you for 30 minutes at a time, renewed every 5 minutes while the window is open. Make your changes, then use the Send options menu: Save Changes keeps the time, Send Now (or the round Send button) sends it within moments, Send 8:00 AM Tomorrow and Send Later… change the time. In every case the email is saved back into the list with the same message identity, so replies to it still thread correctly. Close the window without saving and the email goes back exactly as it was (a "Not sent" email stays "Not sent"). If the email was changed or cancelled on another computer while you had it open, the window says so and your changes cannot be saved. Editing is offered for emails that are Scheduled, Will try again, Needs you to sign in again, Not sent or Missed its time. - Send Now sends it now instead of at its time. - Change Time… opens the same window as Send Later… to choose another date and time. - Cancel Email asks first ("Cancel this scheduled email? It will not be sent, and its text and attachments are erased."), then cancels it. Not offered while it is being sent. - Send Again is for an email that was Not sent or May have been sent. For one that may have been sent, TechieCRM asks first: "This email may already have gone out. Send it again?" - File Again is for a sent email that could not be filed on a client (the details say "Not filed: ..."). TechieCRM tries the entries it could not file on again; it never sends the email again.

Send Now, Change Time, Send Again and File Again happen straight away when TechieCRM is open here; otherwise on whichever of your computers opens TechieCRM next.

Filing. After it is sent, a scheduled email is filed exactly as Send Now would have filed it: on the client the message was opened from, and for a reply or forward from Email Details, on every entry the original email is filed on. If filing fails the email stays "Sent", the details say "Not filed: (reason)", TechieCRM tries again for an hour, and File Again tries again whenever you choose.

Signatures

(14 Oct 2026) Each TechieCRM user keeps their own signatures (as many as 20), and chooses a default signature for each address they send from. Nobody else signing in on the same computer sees them.

In the compose window. At the right of the From row is Signature: with a pop-up: - None takes the signature out of the message. - Each of your signatures by name puts that signature in. Choosing another one replaces the one in the message; a signature is never put in twice. - Edit Signatures… opens the Signatures window (below). When you close it, the pop-up lists your signatures as they now are. A signature already in the message is left as it was: choose it again in the pop-up to take your changes.

Where the signature goes: in a new message, below the line you type on, after a blank line, so you write above it. In a reply or forward, between the line you type on and the quoted message (On …, Jane Doe wrote: or the Forwarded message block), with a blank line above and below it.

The default for each address. When the window opens, the default signature of the From address is already in the message. When you change From, the signature changes to the new address's default; if that address has none, the signature is taken out. Lines you type inside the signature itself belong to it and are replaced with it, so write your message above it.

The signature is sent the way the rest of the message is: readable on the white page every mail program uses, whatever your Theme shows you. Signatures are not offered in Email to Many (its message is a template; put your sign-off in the template).

The Signatures window (Settings ▸ Email ▸ Signatures ▸ Edit Signatures…, or Edit Signatures… in the compose window's pop-up): - The list on the left holds your signatures. + adds one called Signature (or Signature 2, and so on) and starts renaming it; type a name and press Return. Rename (or double-click a name) renames the chosen signature; two signatures cannot have the same name, and the window says so if you try. − deletes the chosen signature after asking; any address that had it as its default then has none. - The editor on the right is the chosen signature, with the font, size, bold, italic, underline and colour buttons. Text pasted from another program loses its colours, font and size, as in the compose window. Pictures and files cannot go into a signature yet (the message would arrive with a broken picture); the window says so if you drop one in. What you type is saved a moment after you stop, and at once when you choose another signature or close the window. - Default signature has one pop-up for each address you send from: None or one of your signatures. The choice is saved at once. - All addresses: (18 Oct 2026; shown when you send from two or more addresses) is the first row of Default signature. Choose a signature (or None) in it and it becomes the default for every address at once; each address's own pop-up changes to show it, and each is saved (and follows you to your other devices) exactly as if you had changed it there. While the addresses have different defaults it shows Different for each address; change any one address afterwards and it says so again. - Use for All Addresses (18 Oct 2026), the button under the list, does the same in one click for the signature chosen in the list: it becomes the default for every address you send from. It is greyed when no signature is chosen or when you send from only one address. - Renaming in the list opens the name in an edit box tall enough for the whole name at every text size. - Drag the line between the list and the editor to give either more room; the window can be resized and everything in it grows with it.

Your signatures follow you (15 Oct 2026; once mail account sync is switched on for your workspace, see Your mail accounts on all your devices above). Your signatures, and the default signature you chose for each address, go with your mail accounts to every computer you have allowed. Make a signature on one computer and choose it as the default for an address: on your other computers it is the default for that address too, within a few seconds while they are open, or the next time they open. Renaming, editing and deleting move the same way. Only you see them: another TechieCRM user, your administrator and other people in your office cannot. Signatures are not sealed like passwords (they hold nothing secret), so the TechieCRM web portal can show and use them later.

• Changed on two computers at once. A change made on one computer only is simply taken. When you change different things on two computers (say, the name on one and the text on the other), both changes are kept. When you change the same thing differently on both before they catch up, TechieCRM asks: Signature "Work" was changed on this computer and on another of your devices (text). with what each one says and Use This One Everywhere, Use the Other One Here or Decide Later (you are asked again at the next sync). Nothing is replaced silently. The same question covers Default signatures (the default for one address chosen differently on two computers).
• Deleted on one, edited on the other. An edit made on this computer wins over a deletion made elsewhere (the signature comes back everywhere); a deletion made on this computer wins over an edit made elsewhere.
• The same name on two computers. When you made the same signature (same name, same text) on two computers before sharing, you end up with one. When the text differs, the one that arrives is renamed Work 2 on every computer, so you can tell them apart and delete the one you do not want.
• Too long to share. The cloud keeps a signature of up to 128 KB (raised from 16 KB on 16 Oct 2026), far more than a few lines with a styled table and a linked logo. The Signatures editor lets you type more than that (up to 100,000 characters, and letters such as accented or Asian characters take more space than plain ones), so a very long signature can still be over the limit: it stays on the computer it was made on and Your devices in Settings ▸ Email says: Not shared: Signature "…": too long to share (the cloud keeps signatures up to 128 KB); it stays on this computer. Nothing is cut short. Shorten it and it is shared at the next sync.
• An open window shows what arrives (16 Oct 2026). When signatures or default signatures arrive from your other computers while the Signatures window or Settings ▸ Email is open, the list, the text, the default pop-ups and the line 2 signatures. Defaults are set for… change at once; you do not need to close and reopen them. What you are typing is never lost: your text is saved first and goes to your other computers; if the signature you are typing in was deleted on another computer, your text is kept as a new signature with the same name and a note under the list says so. While you are renaming a signature, the list waits until you finish.
• 20 signatures at most on one computer. If one arrives when a computer already has 20, it is not added there and Your devices says so; delete one you do not use.

A computer whose mail accounts are waiting to be allowed (Waiting for approval) keeps its own signatures until it is allowed; then the signatures from your other computers arrive and its own are shared.

To Many…: one copy for each person instead

(13 Oct 2026) Beside To is To Many…: since 18 October 2026 a small picture of a group of people (full colour when you can use it, dimmed when it is greyed; point at it to see what it does). It turns the message you are writing into an Email to Many (see Email to many people, one at a time below), so each person receives their own copy with only their own address in To: 1. Click To Many…. The recipient window Email to Many: Recipients opens with the addresses you typed in To, Cc and Bcc, each matched to its client entry, so you can check them, untick anyone, or Add more people. (In Email to Many everyone gets their own copy, so a Cc or Bcc address is simply one more person in the list.) With nothing typed in To, the list starts empty. 2. Click Next. The Email to Many window opens with your subject, your message, your attachments and the From account you chose, and this compose window closes. With an empty message, your default email template is put in as usual. 3. Cancel in the recipient window instead takes you back to the compose window exactly as you left it; nothing is moved or lost.

To Many… is shown on a new message and on Forward. It is not shown on Reply or Reply All (a reply goes back to the people who wrote to you) or in the Email to Many window itself. It is greyed, with the reason when you point at it, when Email to Many is not available to you (see Email to many people, one at a time), and clicking it checks again and says why if it is refused.

Addresses suggested as you type

In To, Cc and Bcc, start typing a name, a company or an address: after a moment (about a fifth of a second after you stop typing) a list opens under the field with the matching addresses from your clients, one line per address, written as Name (Company) <address>, for example Jane Doe (Acme Ltd) <jane@acme.example>. TechieCRM looks for what you typed at the start of: - the first name, the last name, or "first last" together (Jane D); - the company name; - any of the client's email addresses (Email 1, Email 2 and Email 3).

Companies, individuals and contacts are all searched; a person with two addresses appears twice, once per address. After your clients come your recent addresses (20 Oct 2026, as on the local portal): the people you sent to (from your Sent folders, the most recent first) and then the people who wrote to you (from your Inboxes), matched on the start of their address, their name or any word of it. They come from your own mail on this computer (the mail TechieCRM keeps for your sign-in), so they are yours alone, and an address a client already has is listed once, as the client. Your own email accounts are offered last. At most 20 lines are shown; type more letters to narrow the list. Nothing is looked up until you have typed two letters.

• Up / Down move through the list (the first line is highlighted when it opens).
• Enter, Return or Tab puts the highlighted address in the field; so does a click.
• Esc closes the list and keeps what you typed.

The chosen address goes in as Jane Doe <jane@acme.example>, followed by a comma, so you can type the next one straight away; addresses already in the field stay as they are. You can still type any address by hand, and separate addresses with commas or semicolons. The lookup only reads your client records; it never changes them. Without a CRM database (TechieCRM's own database only), the clients in TechieCRM's database are searched instead (one address each). The list takes its colours from your Theme.

The formatting toolbar

Click Aa at the top of the window to show the editor's three toolbars (font and size, bold / italic / underline, Text Color and Background Color, paragraph, lists, insert, undo / redo); click it again to hide them. The font box shows the font the message is written in (the system font at 12 points) rather than the first font in the list. Text Color and Background Color are two-part buttons: click the colour icon to pick a colour, or click the small arrow beside it for Automatic (text colour) / No Colour (background), which removes the colour from the selected text, and Choose Colour…. Every button is wide enough for its icon and arrow at every Font Size (Settings ▸ Font Style).

Filing is automatic activity logging, so a user's rights don't restrict it. The email and its paired note are recorded by TechieCRM, not written by you, so they're filed for every user who can send email, including a user without the notes Insert right (Chapter 17, Who can add, change and delete notes). The same applies to Reply… and Save to Client… below. If filing does fail for another reason, such as the database being unreachable, the email has still been sent and you're told that filing failed and why.

The licence does restrict filing. A user's rights don't, but licence state does: on a copy with no active licence (read-only mode), or on a plan where Clients is read-only, nothing is filed and no note is added. The message says No active license or Read-only on your plan. (In read-only mode TechieCRM doesn't let you send from a client either, so in practice you meet this only with Save to Client….)

Email to many people, one at a time

(October 2026) Email to Many sends the same email to a list of people from your own email account, one separate copy per person, one at a time. Each person sees only their own address in To, fields such as [First Name] are filled in for each person, and each sent copy is filed on that person's entry like any email you send. It is for tens or a few hundred personal emails (an invitation, a price change, a follow-up after an event). For thousands of people, or when you want open and click figures, use Marketing (Chapter 16) instead.

Email to Many is available wherever you can write email. It is greyed or refused, with the reason, when Email is a beta module you can only view, when your plan or licence is read-only, or when your rights do not let you send email.

Where to start it

Where	Click	Who is in the list to start with
Home ribbon, Write group	Email to Many	The entries you have marked in Clients; with none marked, an empty list you fill with Add
Clients ▸ right-click ▸ Send Email…, then in Send this email to:	Selected entries	The marked entries (needs two or more marked)
Clients ▸ right-click ▸ Send Email…, then in Send this email to:	Whole current list	Every entry in the Clients list as it is filtered now
Clients ▸ right-click ▸ Send Email…, then in Send this email to:	A Favorite List…	Choose a Favorite List; its members
Sales ▸ right-click	Email Clients of Selected Sales…	The client of each marked (or the selected) sale; the sale's own fields can be used in the message
Service ▸ right-click	Email Clients of Selected Tickets…	The client of each marked (or the selected) ticket, with the ticket's fields
View ribbon (Clients, Sales, Service), Favorite Lists group	Email a List	Choose a Favorite List; its members
The Email window: the small arrow on New Message	New Message to Many…	An empty list
Any compose window (a new message or a forward), beside To	To Many…	The addresses typed in To, Cc and Bcc; the subject, message and attachments come too (see To Many…: one copy for each person instead)

Whichever you start from, the recipient window opens first, so you always see who will receive the email before you write it.

(12 Oct 2026) The Clients right-click has one Send Email…. It asks Send this email to: This entry (the ordinary one-person email), Selected entries, Whole current list or A Favorite List…, with the counts shown, and starts on the choice you used last (or This entry when that choice cannot be used now). The last three start Email to Many. Chapter 3, "Right-click on a client", has the details.

Choosing who receives it: the recipient window

The window Email to Many: Recipients lists one row per person: Include (a tick box), Name, Company, Address, From (where the row came from: Selected, List, Favorite List: , Typed, Sale or Ticket) and Status.

Add puts more people in the same list, so you can mix sources: - Selected Entries: the entries marked or selected in Clients now. - Whole Current List: every entry in the Clients list. - Favorite List…: choose a Favorite List; its members are added. - Type or Paste Addresses…: type or paste addresses, separated by commas, semicolons or new lines. Jane Doe jane@acme.example is accepted as well as a bare address. Each address is looked up in your entries, so its fields can be filled in and the copy filed.

Which address is used. Each entry receives the email at its Email 1. If Email 1 is empty, the first address in Email 2 or Email 3 is used and the row says Not the default address; it is still ticked, and you can untick it.

Who is skipped, and why. A skipped row is unticked and its box cannot be ticked. Its Status says why: - No email address: the entry has no address at all. - Do not contact: the entry's Client Status is Do not contact (a contact follows its company's status). Change the status first if the person should receive it. - Unsubscribed: the address is on your workspace's unsubscribe list. - Already in the list (row 3): the same address is already in the list; the first row is kept, so nobody receives two copies. Addresses are compared without spaces and without regard to capitals. - Not an email address: typed text that is not an address. - Entry not found: the entry no longer exists, or the sale or ticket has no client.

Two statuses are not skipped but are worth a look (shown in the warning colour): - Not the default address: see above. - No client entry: a typed address that matches no entry. It is ticked and receives the email, its fields are left blank, and the copy is not filed anywhere.

A typed address that belongs to more than one entry shows (2 entries) after the name; select the row and click Choose Entry… to pick which entry the copy is merged and filed on (the first one is used until you choose).

At the foot: 312 will receive this email, 14 skipped (and , 3 unticked when you untick rows). Show chooses All, Will receive or Skipped. Copy Skipped List copies the skipped rows and their reasons, to paste elsewhere. Remove takes the selected rows out of the list. Next goes on to the message; Cancel closes without sending anything.

If the unsubscribe list cannot be read, the window says The unsubscribe list could not be checked. and you can still go on; if Client Status cannot be read on your database, it says that no entry was skipped as Do not contact.

Writing the message

The message window is the usual compose window with a few differences: - To says 312 recipients with Change…, which reopens the recipient window. - There is no Cc or Bcc: a Cc person would receive one copy for every recipient. - Template… lists the shared email templates (read only): choose one and click Insert to put its message into yours. A template fills in the message only: type the subject yourself (the window says so). If you have a default email template, it is put in for you when the window opens with an empty message. Templates are read from the CRM database, so they are not offered without one. - Insert Field… adds a field that is filled in for each person, such as [First Name] or [Company]. A recipient from Sales or Service can also use that sale's or ticket's fields. - Preview… (see below) and Send…. - Choose the sending account in From as usual. Email to Many always sends through your account's outgoing server, never through the Mac's Mail app.

Preview: each person's copy, and empty fields

Preview… opens Email to Many: Preview: the message as the first person will receive it, with Previous and Next to go through everyone. Beside it, Fields left blank lists the fields that have no value for that person; an empty field is simply left blank in the email. While you look, TechieCRM checks everyone in the background (Checking everyone's details: 120 of 312) and then says Empty fields for 27 people. with Show Them, which lists those people; click one to see their copy. Every field has a value for everyone. means nothing is blank.

Confirming: how many, how long, and the daily limit

Send… opens a confirmation before anything is sent: - Send 312 separate emails from ann@acme.example, one every 5 seconds (about 26 minutes). - the first message, as the first person will receive it, with its subject; - a note on the daily limit: Email to Many uses at most 90% of the account's daily limit (450 of 500 for Gmail), so you can still reply to clients today. The last 10% is kept free so that you can still answer clients' emails during and after the send. The figure is an estimate: emails you send outside Email to Many are not counted. When the provider does not publish its limit, the note says which figure is assumed.

When the list is bigger than what the account can still send today, the confirmation says, for example, This account can send about 180 more today. 312 are selected. 180 today, the rest from 9:40 AM tomorrow. Then: - Send 180 Now, the Rest Tomorrow (the default): today's share goes now, and the rest carries on by itself when the allowance returns, as long as TechieCRM is open. When nothing more can be sent today, this button reads Send When Allowed. - Send All Anyway: ignore the allowance. Your mail provider may refuse the rest, and may refuse your own replies today. - Back: return to the message.

Otherwise the buttons are Send and Back. With 500 or more people the confirmation also suggests Marketing (For 500 or more people, Marketing is built for large mailings: it sends from your mailing service and collects opens and unsubscribes. You can still send from here.); it never stops you. If another Email to Many is already being sent from this computer, it says this one starts when that one finishes: one is sent at a time.

Without a subject, TechieCRM asks Send to 312 people without a subject? first.

While it sends: progress, Pause, Resume, Cancel

After Send, the message window closes and the Email to Many window shows the progress: Sending 45 of 312, a progress bar, and Sent 43, failed 1, skipped 0. Below it, a list shows everyone who has not received the email or whose copy was not filed, with Address, Name, What happened (Failed, Skipped, May have been sent, Not sent yet, Not sent, Sent, not filed) and Reason. Sending goes on in the background; you can keep working.

• Pause stops after the email being sent now. Resume carries on.
• Cancel asks Stop sending? The people not reached yet will not receive this email. You can send to them later with Retry Unsent.
• Close closes the window; closing it does not stop sending. While a send is going on, the Email window's header says so, for example Sending 45 of 312, Email to Many paused: 45 of 312 sent or Email to Many waiting until 9:40 AM tomorrow: 180 of 312 sent. Click that text to bring the progress window back. When the send ends, the header says Email to Many finished: 300 of 312 sent for a minute (in the warning colour when someone failed).
• When the daily allowance is used up, the window says Waiting until 9:40 AM tomorrow and carries on by itself then, while TechieCRM is open.

When the mail server refuses something: - A busy server or a dropped connection before the email was handed over: TechieCRM tries again a minute later, then five minutes later; after that the person is listed as failed. - The server says the account's daily limit is reached: sending waits for the allowance, as above. - The server refuses one address (no such user): that person is listed as Failed with the server's answer, and sending carries on. - The server refuses your sign-in: sending pauses and the window shows the sign-in problem. Fix the account in Settings ▸ Email, then Resume. - The connection drops while an email is being handed over: TechieCRM cannot know whether it arrived, so the person is listed as May have been sent and is never sent again by itself.

The summary at the end

When everyone has been dealt with (or you cancel), the window shows the summary, for example 312 in total: 300 sent, 12 skipped, 0 failed. 300 filed on their entries. Then: - Retry Unsent sends to the people who were not sent to (cancelled or still waiting). If some failed, it asks whether to try them again too. People who received it, and people who may have received it, are never included. - Send Again (select one or more May have been sent rows first) asks These 2 people may already have received this email. Send it to them again?, because they could get a second copy. - File Again files the sent copies that could not be filed (for example when the database could not be reached). It never sends anything. - Copy List copies the people listed and why, to paste elsewhere.

Where each copy is filed

Each sent copy is filed once, straight after it is sent, the same way as an email you send with Send Email…: - a person from Clients, from a Favorite List or a typed address that matched an entry: on that entry; - a person from Sales or Service: on the sale or ticket once saving emails to sales and tickets is switched on for your database; until then on the client's entry, and the summary says Filed on the client (sales and tickets not yet enabled).; - a typed address with no entry (No client entry): not filed.

A copy that could not be filed is still sent; it is listed as Sent, not filed for File Again. TechieCRM does not keep a copy of each person's message: only the message you wrote (encrypted) and the list of people, in a file of its own on this computer, so a send can carry on after a restart and nobody is sent the email twice.

Each Email to Many writes one entry in the Activity Log when it ends or is cancelled: the subject, how many were sent, skipped and failed, and the sending address; never the message or the list of people (Appendix A11).

After a restart, and quitting while it sends

Quitting while a send is going on asks Pause sending and quit? It can continue next time. Pause and Quit pauses after the email being sent now and quits; Keep Sending stays open.

The next time you sign in, TechieCRM asks about each unfinished send, for example An email to many people was not finished: 120 of 312 sent., with its subject and sending address, and how many may have been sent when TechieCRM stopped. Nothing is sent until you choose: - Continue Sending opens the Email to Many window for that send and carries on, with the same progress, Pause, Cancel and summary as before. If you continue more than one, they are sent one after the other. - Review lists everyone with Name, Address, State (Sent, Not sent yet, May have been sent, Failed, Skipped, Not sent (cancelled)) and Note. Select May have been sent rows and click Send Again if they should be sent again; then choose Continue Sending, Cancel the Rest or Decide Later. - Cancel the Rest sends nothing more; the people not reached yet are marked as not sent. - Decide Later leaves it as it is; you are asked again next time.

Pace and daily limits

Email to Many sends one email every 5 seconds by default, so a mail provider does not mistake it for a burst of spam. Change it in Settings ▸ Email ▸ Email to Many, Send one email every: from 3 to 60 seconds.

It uses at most 90% of the account's daily limit, counting what Email to Many has sent from that account on this computer in the last 24 hours, and keeps the last 10% for your normal replies. The limit TechieCRM assumes for each provider:

Provider	Daily limit assumed	Email to Many uses at most
Gmail (an @gmail.com address)	500	450
Google Workspace (your own domain on Google)	2,000	1,800
Microsoft 365	10,000 (and at most 30 a minute)	9,000
Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live	300 (an estimate: not published)	270
iCloud Mail	1,000	900
Yahoo Mail	500 (an estimate: not published)	450
Any other mail server	500 (an estimate)	450

The provider is recognised from the account's address first (gmail.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com, icloud.com, yahoo and similar), then from its outgoing server, then from how it signs in. If your provider or your own mail server allows a different figure, set it on the account: Settings ▸ Email, select the account, Edit…, then Most emails a day under the outgoing server. Leave it at Provider's figure to use the table, or type a number from 10 to 100,000; the line under it says how many Email to Many will then send at most (90%). All of these are estimates: emails sent from other programs, or with Send Email…, are not counted.

Not yet available

• An unsubscribe line at the foot of each copy (next).
• Taking the subject from a template, and adding, saving or changing templates.

Send Text…

Clients / Related ▸ right-click ▸ Send Text… opens the client's thread in the Messages window (Chapter 24); texts go through the TechieCRM cloud (Twilio; needs an active subscription with the SMS add-on) and every text is filed on the client as a Text Message note. Replies come back through sync into the same thread (and the Messages badge / notifications).

Conversations on the web portal

The web portal keeps the same two halves in two places: sidebar ▸ Messages is your user-to-user chat, and Conversations (/conversations/) is the client texts and emails: every thread, newest first, with All / SMS / Email filters and an Unread toggle. - All / SMS / Email choose the channel; Unread narrows to the conversations that still have a message nobody has read. The two work together: pick SMS, then Unread, and you get the texts waiting on you. The button matching your view stays highlighted, so you can always see which view you are in; click Unread again to bring the read ones back. - The ribbon's View ▸ All / Clients (texts) / Unread open exactly these three views, and View ▸ Users opens the internal chat list instead. - When a filter hides everything, the page says which filter did it ("no unread texts") and offers Show all conversations; it never tells you there are no conversations when there are. - New conversation starts one with a client who has never written in. Type part of the client's name and choose Text or Email on the matching row: the client's own composer opens with their numbers / address already filled in, exactly as it does from the client record. Whether the message actually goes out depends on the workspace's SMS provider and sending address; if neither is set up the composer says so and links to the setting, and nothing is sent. - Opening a thread marks it read; the box at the bottom replies on the channel the conversation is already on.

Unread is yours alone

Unread means "unread by you". Everyone in the workspace sees the same conversations, but each person has their own unread list and their own count. A colleague opening a client's text no longer clears your badge, and your reading it does not clear theirs, so nobody can assume "someone must have seen that". - The red count beside the Conversations heading is the number of conversations waiting on you. - Unread filters to your own, not the workspace's. - Mark as unread (right-click a row, or the button on the conversation) puts it back on your list after you have opened it. It changes nothing for anybody else. - Conversations that existed before this feature behave exactly as they did: unread for everyone who has not opened them.

Taking responsibility for a conversation

A shared inbox works when it is clear who has picked something up. Every conversation is either Unassigned or Assigned to somebody, and the chip on the row says which.

Assignment changes prominence, never access. An assigned conversation is still listed for everybody, still opens for everybody, and can still be answered by anybody. All that changes is that it stops counting toward other people's unread badge, so the rest of the team can see at a glance what is genuinely still waiting.

Right-click a conversation in the inbox, or use the buttons at the top of the conversation itself:

Action	What it does
Assign to me	Puts it on your list. Refused, with a message naming the owner, if somebody already has it.
Assign to user…	Hands it to a colleague. Managers only; see below.
Take over	Moves it from its current owner onto you, deliberately. Both names are recorded and the previous owner keeps full access.
Release	Gives it back to the whole team. It becomes unread again for everyone who has not read it, rather than quietly disappearing.
Mark as unread	Puts it back on your unread list only.

Two more rules worth knowing: - Replying to an unassigned conversation assigns it to you. Answering is picking it up, and being made to say so twice is how a shared inbox ends up with nothing assigned. - Replying to somebody else's does not take it from them. The page shows a notice saying who owns it and that your reply will still be sent. It is a warning, not a block. Only Take over moves the conversation.

You can also narrow the list with Mine (conversations assigned to you) and Unassigned (nobody has picked these up), and both combine with the channel and unread filters.

"Assign to user…": who can hand work to somebody else

Claiming, taking over and releasing your own are open to everyone. Directing somebody else's work is not. You get Assign to user… if you are either:

• a team leader: you lead at least one team in Settings ▸ Teams. Your picker offers the members of the teams you lead; or
• a workspace administrator, or a member of a security group with Administration ▸ Modify ticked in Settings ▸ Security Groups. Your picker offers every member of the workspace.

Anyone else still sees the menu item, greyed out, with the reason on hover, so it is clear the function exists and who to ask, rather than one person's screen quietly having an extra option.

The picker never reaches outside your own workspace, and never offers a client-portal login: a customer must not become the owner of their own message. A manager may also Release a conversation held by somebody in their scope; otherwise a conversation claimed by a colleague who is away would be stuck until they came back.

Not yet on the desktop. Per-person unread, assignment, Take over and Release are web-portal features today. The desktop still shows a single workspace-wide unread count and does not display the assignment chip, so a workspace running both will see the two disagree about "unread".

Notifications

Notifications (the ribbon's Custom ▸ Notifications button, the bell) lists your alerts: new replies, monitoring rule alerts, changes to records you monitor (Chapter 3, Monitoring a client, and Chapter 4, Monitoring a sale or a ticket), and new matches of saved searches you monitor (Chapter 20, Notify me of new matches). The button shows how many are unread, for example Notifications (3); the count is checked about once a minute.

This computer's alerts come first. The window lists the alerts kept on this computer (Settings ▸ Database, the local store) before anything else, so it works offline and without a cloud subscription. When you are connected to the cloud it then adds any alert raised elsewhere that has not reached this computer yet. The top line says which: Not connected to the cloud: showing this computer's alerts only, or Checking the cloud for more… while it looks.

Opening an alert marks it read everywhere: on this computer at once, and on the web and your phone after the next sync (and at once on the web when you are connected). Mark all read does the same for all of them. An alert you already read on the web shows as read here too. Alerts for a conversation open it in Messages; other alerts open the matching web portal page when you are connected.

Banners. When a new alert about something you monitor arrives, TechieCRM shows a banner from its icon in your computer's notification area (the menu bar on a Mac, the system tray on Windows). A banner names the record and what happened (for example Ticket FP-00086 Printer jam: Status changed. or Reassigned to you.); it never shows a field's value or which field changed, because anyone passing the screen can read it. Several alerts at once show one banner with the count. Alerts that were already waiting when TechieCRM started are counted, not announced. Click a banner to open Notifications. Message replies get no banner (they have the Messages badge). Settings ▸ General ▸ Monitoring alerts turns banners off and sets quiet hours (Appendix A5): during quiet hours banners are held, never lost, and one banner says how many arrived when the quiet hours end. Some Linux desktops have no notification area; there you see the count on the Notifications button only, and Settings says so.

How quickly. Changes to the clients, sales and tickets you monitor are noticed within about two minutes, whether they were made in TechieCRM or in the source CRM. Every two minutes the computer that runs the source CRM checks for your TechieCRM database (see below) asks the source CRM one short question: has anything changed since the last refresh? Only when something has does it copy the changed records into the local store and look for alerts; otherwise it reads the office's activity log only. A change saved less than 30 seconds earlier waits for the next check, so that an edit and its activity-log entry are read together and raise one alert, not two. The full refresh every 15 minutes still runs as a catch-all. A record deleted in the source CRM raises no alert, and neither does a note or document filed there against a record you monitor.

Without cloud sync. A computer without cloud sync (no subscription, or sync switched off in Cloud Connection) does the same, but only while monitoring has something to do: someone monitors a record, a monitoring rule is switched on, or the source CRM's monitoring lists are being imported. It then refreshes only what monitoring reads (users, clients, sales and tickets), not the rest of the database, and an office that never uses monitoring sends no extra questions to the source CRM at all. When each computer has its own TechieCRM database (the usual installation), read and unread are kept per computer: an alert you open on one computer still shows as unread on another until cloud sync is on.

One computer per TechieCRM database. When several computers share one TechieCRM database server (Settings ▸ Local Database ▸ Connect to another MongoDB server), exactly one of them runs the source CRM checks for all of them, so no change is read twice or lost. Settings ▸ Database ▸ Source CRM checks says which one, for example Source CRM checks for this database run on FRONTDESK, last renewed 2 minutes ago, or Not running: no monitors are active. If that computer is switched off, another one takes over within 20 minutes; closing TechieCRM normally hands over at once. When the TechieCRM local portal runs on the same computer and holds the sync, it runs them instead.

Monitoring emails (offices without cloud sync)

Alerts about records you monitor can also come by email. In an office that syncs with the TechieCRM cloud, the cloud sends them. In an office without cloud sync, one computer in the office sends them from an email account you choose:

1. On the computer that should send them (one that is usually on), open Settings ▸ General ▸ Monitoring emails.
2. Tick Send the office's monitoring emails from this computer.
3. In Send from, choose the account. The list shows the email accounts of the person signed in on this computer that can send (Settings ▸ Email). Use an office account rather than a personal mailbox: every monitoring email in the office goes out from it.

You can tick the box on more than one computer: only one of them sends at a time, and if it is switched off for 20 minutes another ticked computer takes over. A computer that syncs with the cloud never sends them, and while any computer in the office syncs with the cloud no computer does, so nobody gets the same email twice. Settings ▸ Database ▸ Monitoring emails and the line at the top of the group say which computer sends them, for example FRONTDESK sends the office's monitoring emails; this computer takes over if it stops for 20 minutes. The first time a computer starts sending, and when it takes over from another, it does not email changes from before that moment (they were sent already, or they are old). TechieCRM keeps a small table of its own in the office's database to agree which computer sends; it is created automatically the first time someone signs in with the MASTER ID (or an ID with SQL admin rights), like TechieCRM's other tables, and your CRM data is not changed.

What an email says. The record and what happened, for example Ticket FP-00086 Printer jam: Status changed, which fields changed (their names, never their values), who made the change and when, in your time zone. A monitoring rule alert shows the rule's text. To see the details, open TechieCRM.

How often. Under Your monitoring emails in the same group, each person chooses for themselves:

Setting	What it does	Default
Records you monitor	Immediately (one email per change), Hourly digest, Daily digest or Off	Immediately
Saved search matches	the same choices	Daily digest
Monitoring rule alerts	the same choices	Immediately
At most this many immediate emails an hour	above it, the rest of the hour's changes wait for the next hourly digest	10
Daily digest at (hour)	when the daily digest goes out	8:00
Time zone	for the digest times and the times shown in emails	this computer's
Quiet hours for email	emails that would go out in the window are held and go out as one email when it ends	off, 22:00 to 07:00

A digest lists the changes grouped by record, newest first. An hourly digest goes out at the next full hour after the first change waiting, a daily one at the digest hour. The whole office sends at most 500 immediate emails an hour; above that everything waits for the digests. An alert you have already opened in TechieCRM is not emailed. If the mail server refuses a message, TechieCRM tries again later (up to five times, waiting longer each time) and never sends the same email twice.

When each computer has its own TechieCRM database (the usual installation), these choices are kept on the computer where you make them, and the sending computer uses its own copy: make them on the sending computer too (the group says so). Emails are checked every 15 minutes, with the rest of the source CRM checks, so an immediate email arrives within about 15 minutes of the change.

On the web portal the sidebar's Messages entry carries a red count of the internal messages waiting for you, the same badge the desktop icon bar shows. It is on every page, counts only messages sent to you (never your own, never anyone else's), and clears the moment you open the conversation.

The Email window

The Email icon-bar module is your live mail: the messages in your email accounts right now, every account's inbox collected into one list, newest first, the way the Mac's Mail app shows it. Emails you have already filed on a client are on the client, under Clients ▸ Interactions ▸ Emails (Chapter 3). When your Inbox and Sent are kept in the TechieCRM database (see Where your Inbox and Sent are kept below), a filed email also leaves your Inbox and Sent, and Show saved lists it again.

The window title says what you are looking at and how many messages it holds, for example TechieCRM - 'IslandCRM2017' - [Email(All Inboxes) - 1,234]. The words in brackets follow what the window shows: Email(Work: Inbox) for one account's Inbox, Email(Work: Sent) for a folder, Email(Flagged), Email(All Sent), and while you search, Email(Search "invoice" in All Inboxes). The number follows them too: All Inboxes counts every account's Inbox; one account's Inbox or any folder shows that folder's count (the server's own count once it has reported one); All Drafts and All Sent count every account's Drafts or Sent folder; Flagged counts the flagged messages; and while you search, the number is how many messages the search found (no number when it found none). It updates as mail arrives or is deleted. (17 Oct 2026: these words used to be shown in the Email header as "Email [All Inboxes]", and the number was always the All Inboxes count.)

The header is one bar (17 Oct 2026: the second bar under it is gone, so the list and the message start right under the header). From the left: the sidebar button (a window outline with a panel on its left, as in the Mac's Mail app; shows or hides the mailbox sidebar, see Mailboxes and folders); the six icon buttons, the current client's name, Show saved (only for an Inbox or Sent kept in the TechieCRM database, see Show saved), 👁 and Conversations (see The header's icon buttons below); the Scheduled clock (see Scheduled: emails waiting to be sent); the window's notices (see Notices in the header below); Search mail; then the toolbar, laid out like the Mac's Mail app: New Message on its own (a square with a pencil writing into its corner; opens a new email), then Reply, Reply All and Forward side by side as one group (a blue arrow turning back to the left, the same arrow with a second arrowhead behind it, and a green arrow turning to the right; see Replying and forwarding), 🗑️ Move to Trash and 📁 Move to (see Reading, flags, deleting and moving), then ↻ Check for New Mail, ⚙️ Email Settings (opens Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email) and ❌ Close, at the right edge. Point at any of them to see its name. Pointing at ↻ Check for New Mail also says when your mail was last checked: Checked just now, Checked 4 min ago or Checking for new mail… (kept up to date while you point).

A narrow window. When the window is too narrow for everything, the Search mail field gets narrower first. If that is not enough, the least-used items leave the header one by one and a » button appears just before New Message: New Ticket… goes first, then New Sale…, Save to Ticket…, Save to Sale…, Show saved (when it is shown), Conversations, 👁, Save to Client…, Scheduled and the current client's name. Click » to see them as a menu, with their pictures and names (a greyed entry cannot act now, as on its button); choosing one does what its button does. Widen the window and they come back into the header. Nothing in the header is ever cut off. The four mail buttons use TechieCRM's own colour icons, the same family as the icon bar, and look the same in every theme; when an arrow cannot be used (no message selected), it stays in colour but faded. Closing the window does not stop the mail check: TechieCRM keeps checking in the background for the unread count on the Email icon (see Checking for new mail) until you sign out or quit.

Notices in the header. Anything the window needs to tell you is one line of coloured text in the header, just before the Search mail field; there is no bar above the list and no extra button. Text you can click shows a pointing hand and is underlined when you point at it; clicking it opens what deals with it. For example: - ⚠ 13 (amber): 13 email accounts need attention. Point at it for the sentence and which accounts and why; click it to open the notification bell's list, where each account can be fixed. (17 Oct 2026: it used to read "⚠ 13 email accounts need attention"; the number alone saves room.) - ⚠ Your email accounts could not be read (red): click it to try again. - Moved 2 messages to Trash. followed by Undo, or Filed on Acme Ltd. followed by Undo and Open in Clients: the words after the sentence are clickable. These show for 10 seconds, ahead of any warning; ✕ closes one sooner. - Sending 45 of 312 (or Email to Many paused: 45 of 312 sent, Email to Many waiting until …): an Email to Many of yours is being sent. Click it to bring its progress window forward (see Email to many people, one at a time). When there are several notices the most important one shows and +N more after it lists all of them; click one in that list to act on it. A notice too long for the space ends with "…"; point at it to read it all. The colours follow your Theme (amber for a warning, red for a problem).

The header's icon buttons. Right after the sidebar button come six icon buttons (no words on them; point at one to read its name and what it does, and a screen reader announces the name):

Icon	Name	What it does
The Clients card file with a blue floppy disk in its top-right corner	Save to Client…	Files the selected email on the entries you choose (see Filing an email on a client)
The Sales money bag with the floppy disk	Save to Sale…	Files it on a sale and its client
The Service wrench with the floppy disk	Save to Ticket…	Files it on a service ticket and its client
The Sales money bag with a green plus	New Sale…	Creates a sale from the email, then saves the email on it
The Service wrench with a green plus	New Ticket…	Creates a service ticket from the email, then saves the email on it
Two overlapping speech bubbles, blue and gold	Conversations	Groups messages into conversations; shown pressed (your Theme's selected fill, outlined in your Primary colour) while it is on

The icons are the same pictures as the Clients, Sales and Service buttons on the icon bar, so you can tell at a glance which module an email will go to. A greyed icon means the button cannot act now; point at it and the second line of the hover text says why.

• Save to Client…, Save to Sale…, Save to Ticket… and the current client's name (for example Acme Ltd (Bob Smith), in your Theme's link colour): files the selected email on the entries you choose, on a sale or service ticket, or, with one click on the name, on the current client (see Filing an email on a client). The name is the entry selected in Clients: the contact when one is highlighted under the company, else the company. It is underlined when you point at it and says Save this email to Acme Ltd. With no entry selected in Clients it reads No current client, dimmed, and does nothing. Save to Sale… and Save to Ticket… are only shown when the Sales or Service module is switched on for your plan and your sign-in.
• New Sale… and New Ticket…: create a sale or a service ticket from the selected email, then save the email on it (see A new sale or ticket from an email below). Shown when the Sales or Service module is switched on for your plan; greyed, with the reason when you point at it, when the module is a beta module you can only view, your plan or licence is read-only, or your rights do not include creating sales or tickets.
• 👁 shows or hides the reading pane.
• Conversations (the speech bubbles) groups messages into conversations (the default; the button shows pressed). Click it to show one row per message (the button shows unpressed); your choice is remembered for your sign-in on this computer. Point at it to read whether it is on or off. Show One Row per Message in the right-click menu does the same.
• Search mail (further right, before New Message): type any words to narrow the list to messages whose sender, recipients, subject or first lines contain all of them. A conversation stays in the list when any of its messages matches. Search looks through the mail already loaded on this computer (the newest 200 messages of each folder); if nothing matches, the list says No messages match "…" in the mail loaded on this computer.
• Search the mail server (20 Oct 2026, as on the portal): while you search, a button under the list offers Search the mail server for "…". Click it and TechieCRM asks each account's mail server for every message of the mailbox you are looking at that contains all the words, older mail and words inside the message text included (at most 200 per folder; nothing is marked as read). The button reads Searching the mail server… meanwhile. The results take the list's place, with Results from the mail server for "…". above them; they open, reply, file, flag, move and delete like any other message. Show the matches in the mail loaded here (on that line) goes back. When the server finds nothing the list says The mail server found no messages with "…". Typing other words, or choosing another mailbox, goes back to the mail loaded here. A POP account cannot be searched on its server: its messages already loaded are searched instead, and the header says POP accounts cannot be searched on the mail server; the mail loaded here was searched instead: …. An account that cannot be searched (its sign-in fails, say) is named in the header with the reason; the others are still searched.

The Email window remembers where you were

Close the Email window (or quit TechieCRM) while you are in a mailbox or folder, and the next time you open it, it comes back to that mailbox or folder, not to All Inboxes. For example, choose your work account's Archive, quit, and start TechieCRM again: Email opens on that Archive, and the window title reads Email(Work: Archive). It also brings back:

• the message you had selected, shown in the reading pane, with the list scrolled to it (if that message has been deleted or moved meanwhile, the list opens at the top with nothing selected);
• how far down the list you had scrolled, when no message was selected;
• which accounts you had opened in the sidebar;
• the sizes you dragged the sidebar, the list and the reading pane to (kept separately for the two-column and the rows layout);
• whether the sidebar is shown (as before).

The Search mail box always starts empty: a search is never kept.

If the remembered folder or account is no longer there (the folder was deleted on the mail server, or the account was removed from Settings ▸ Email), the window opens on All Inboxes without a message. It keeps remembering your folder: if the account is set up again (even with a new entry in Settings, as long as it has the same email address), the window opens on it once more. Only a mailbox you click yourself replaces what is remembered.

This is kept on this computer, for each login and each database (see Chapter 2, Each module remembers where you were). Another person signing in here gets their own place.

Mailboxes and folders

When nothing is remembered yet, the window opens on All Inboxes: every account's Inbox in one list. The mailbox sidebar is hidden at first, to leave the room to your mail; click the sidebar button (a window outline with a panel on its left, as in the Mac's Mail app) at the left of the header to show it, and again to hide it. TechieCRM remembers whether you keep it shown, for your sign-in on this computer.

The sidebar is laid out like the Mac's Mail app: - All Inboxes at the top (selected when the window opens with nothing remembered), with the number of unread messages. Under it, each of your accounts (its name or address) with its own unread count. Click an account to see just its Inbox. An account that cannot sign in shows a small ⚠ after its name; point at it to read why (Password needed, Sign-in refused ...). - Accounts start closed. Each account that has folders shows a small triangle at its left, as in the Mac's Mail app: pointing right while closed, down while open. Click the triangle (or double-click the account) to open it and see every folder of that account on the mail server: Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Archive, Junk and Trash first, then all its other folders, each folder inside the one it belongs to (for example Projects inside Inbox, 2026 inside Acme inside Clients). A folder with folders inside it has its own triangle. Unread counts show beside the Inbox and beside every folder you have opened. A folder that only holds other folders (the server does not let it hold mail) shows as a plain heading you cannot click. TechieCRM remembers which accounts and folders you opened while the window is open, even as new mail arrives, and which accounts you opened the next time you open the window. - Flagged: flagged messages from every account (Trash and Junk left out). - All Drafts and All Sent: every account's Drafts, or Sent, in one list (shown when an account has such a folder).

Where the folders come from. Every time TechieCRM checks for new mail (when you open the window, when you click Check for New Mail, and at each timed check, every 5 minutes unless you changed it), it asks each account's mail server for its full list of folders. A folder you create, rename or delete in another mail program (or on your phone) shows the same way here after the next check. The server also says which folder is its Sent, Drafts, Trash, Junk and Archive folder, so TechieCRM finds them even when they have other names (Sent Items, Deleted, Bulk, or a name in another language), and All Drafts and All Sent use those folders. The list is kept on this computer, so the folders show at once the next time you open the window.

An account that cannot sign in keeps its ⚠ and still shows the folders it had the last time it signed in (their messages already on this computer can be read). An account that has never signed in on this computer shows no folders and no triangle until it signs in. An account added a moment ago shows its Inbox until its first check lists the rest.

Click a mailbox or folder to see its messages; the ones already on this computer show at once and the folder is then read from the server and kept up to date. A folder you have never opened is read when you click it: its most recent 200 messages, newest first. In Sent, Drafts, All Sent and All Drafts the sender shows who the message went to (To: Jane Doe).

A POP account has only an Inbox (POP has no folders on the server): its triangle opens to just Inbox.

Two columns or rows

The window is two columns at first: the message list on the left and the message you are reading on the right, the full height of the window. To have the list on top with the message under it (one row per line, with column headings), open Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email, and under Email window choose Reading pane: Below (rows). Right (columns) puts it back. The window changes as soon as you choose, and the choice is kept for your sign-in on this computer.

The same Email window group has two more choices (20 Oct 2026), also offered on the local portal's Settings > Email: - Conversations: On: group messages into conversations (the default) or Off: one row per message. It is the same choice as the window's Conversations button and the right-click menu's Show One Row per Message. - Mark as read: After 2 seconds (the default), 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds, or Only when I choose Mark as Read: how long a message is shown in the reading pane before it is marked read. It is the same choice as the right-click menu's Mark as Read After Viewing.

Both are saved the moment you choose and an open Email window follows at once.

The message list

In two columns each message is a card, as in the Mac's Mail app: - first line: the sender in bold (in Sent and Drafts, who it went to), with the number of messages of a conversation, for example Jane Doe (3); on the right, the account it arrived in (when you look at more than one account) and the date (the time today, Yesterday, the weekday this week, else the date); - second line: the subject (bold while unread), with ⚑ flagged, 📎 attachments and ✔ / ◐ filed on the right; - then the first two lines of the message, when your mail server sends them with the list. A dot at the left marks an unread message; a ▸ under it marks a conversation (click the ▸ to list its messages under it, ▾ to hide them). The selected card is filled with your Primary colour.

In rows each row shows: an arrow for a conversation, ● unread, ⚑ flagged, 📎 attachments, From, Subject, Date, Account (in All Inboxes and the other lists that cover every account) and Filed. Unread rows are bold.

Everything below works the same in both layouts.

Conversations. Messages that answer each other are one row: who last wrote to you (in Sent and Drafts, who you last wrote to) with the number of messages, for example Jane Doe (3), the subject and the date of the newest message. Your own replies from your Sent folder are part of the conversation, as in the Mac's Mail app. ●, ⚑ and 📎 show when any message of the conversation is unread, flagged or has attachments. Click the ▸ arrow (or press the right arrow key) to list the conversation's messages under it; ▾ (or the left arrow key) hides them again. Messages are joined by the reply information mail programs put in every reply; a reply that lost it joins only when its subject starts with Re: or Fwd:, the subjects otherwise match, the two are less than 30 days apart and they share a person. Messages of two different accounts are never joined.

Filed shows ✔ when every message of the row is filed on a client and ◐ when some are; point at it to see every entry it is filed on, sales and tickets included (Filed on Acme Ltd, Sale: Website (Acme Ltd)). The reading pane says it for each message.

Where your Inbox and Sent are kept

(20 Oct 2026) When you sign in with a TechieCRM ID (a sign-in linked to your TechieCRM cloud account, or a MongoDB sign-in with your email address) and the TechieCRM database is on this computer, TechieCRM keeps your Inbox and Sent in that database, under your TechieCRM ID: - the list shows straight away when you open Email, even before the mail server answers; - the message text TechieCRM keeps is encrypted with a key of yours kept on this computer (under TechieCRM's folder, in users, one folder per person); the subjects and senders are kept readable so the list can sort and search them; - an email saved (filed) on a client, sale or ticket leaves Inbox and Sent: it is on the record, where everyone who works with that record finds it, and TechieCRM keeps that one saved copy, not a second one in your mailbox. Every copy leaves: the one you received and your own reply in Sent. Show saved lists them again (next section). The same happens when a colleague, or you on the local portal, saved the email: TechieCRM sees it at its next check; - counts leave saved mail out: the unread number on the Email icon, the folder counts in the sidebar and the window title count only mail that is not saved; - your other folders (Drafts, Trash, Archive, your own folders) and Junk stay on this computer only, as before. Junk never goes into the database.

The first time this applies, TechieCRM copies the Inbox and Sent it already had on this computer into the database, once (the message text follows the first time you open each message). Nothing is deleted: the old copy on this computer is simply no longer used for Inbox and Sent.

If you sign in with a CRM user ID only (SQL Server, no TechieCRM ID linked yet), or the database is on another computer, or it does not answer, nothing changes: your mail is kept on this computer as it always was, saved mail stays listed with its ✔, and there is no Show saved switch.

Show saved

(20 Oct 2026) While you look at an Inbox (All Inboxes, or one account's Inbox) or a Sent folder (All Sent, or one account's Sent) that is kept in the TechieCRM database, the header has a Show saved switch. It is off to begin with: mail saved on a client, sale or ticket is not listed. Click it to list that mail too; each saved line then carries a small Saved label naming where it is saved (Saved on Acme Ltd; an email saved by someone else, or on another computer, is named by the record's ID), and opening it shows the saved copy. In the rows layout the Filed column shows ✔ and pointing at it shows the same words. Click it again to hide saved mail.

There is one switch for Inbox and one for Sent, each covering every account. Your choice stays while you are signed in (closing and opening the Email window keeps it), and it is off again the next time you sign in. It is never saved with your other Email choices. The switch is not shown for Drafts, Trash, Junk, Flagged or your own folders, or when your Inbox and Sent are kept on this computer only.

Right-click a row for: Open, Save as File…, Reply, Reply All, Forward, File on Acme Ltd (the current client), Save to Client…, Save to Sale…, Save to Ticket… (the last two only when those modules are on), New Sale from Email…, New Ticket from Email… (shown and greyed the same way as the New Sale… / New Ticket… buttons), Mark as Read, Mark as Unread, Flag, Unflag, Move to ▸, Move to Trash (Delete from Server for a POP account's messages, Delete when both kinds are selected), Link into One Conversation, Unlink from Conversation, Return to Automatic Grouping, Show One Row per Message, Mark as Read After Viewing ▸ and Check for New Mail. Commands that cannot act on what is selected are greyed; pointing at a greyed Move or Trash command says why.

Fixing a conversation by hand. When TechieCRM joins messages that do not belong together, or misses ones that do: - Unlink from Conversation: open the conversation with its arrow, select the message that does not belong, right-click, Unlink from Conversation. It becomes a row of its own. - Link into One Conversation: select two or more rows (Ctrl-click, or Cmd-click on a Mac), right-click, Link into One Conversation. The largest of the selected conversations keeps them all, and its line is selected so the reading pane shows every message of it together, newest first, as for emails grouped by subject. Only messages of the same account can be linked. - Return to Automatic Grouping forgets what you did by hand for the selected messages.

After each of these the header says what was done, with Undo for 10 seconds. Your corrections are kept on this computer for your sign-in and are remembered when new mail arrives.

Reading a message

Select a message to read it in the reading pane (to the right of the list, or below it in rows). The pane has no caption and no outline of its own (17 Oct 2026: the "MESSAGE" caption and the extra borders are gone); the message starts right at the top.

Messages look the way the sender designed them (17 Oct 2026). The pane shows mail with a built-in web browser engine, as the Mac's Mail app does, so a message keeps its real layout: an order confirmation shows its product pictures beside the names, its prices and its buttons, with sharp text. Nothing in a message can run a program, open a window, download a file or reach the files on your computer. The pane itself never moves away from the message.

Links in a message do nothing when you click them (18 Oct 2026), so a mistaken click on a link in an unexpected email cannot take you anywhere. To open a link in a new tab of your web browser, hold Ctrl and click it (on a Mac, hold Command (⌘) and click it; on a Mac, Control+click is the right-click and opens the menu described below). Point at a link and a tooltip says this, with the link's full address under it, so you can see where it really goes before you open it. TechieCRM's own links on the page work with an ordinary click: Load images, the attachment tags, and an email address in a message (it opens your mail program). The simpler view (below) follows the same rule.

The header of each message, above it, is laid out like the Mac's Mail app: a round badge with the sender's initials (in your Theme's accent colour); the sender's name and address on the first line, the subject on the second, and To: (and Cc: when there is one) on the third. On the right: the mailbox and account the message is in with a small folder sign (for example Inbox - IslandCRM Consulting Inc), the date and time, and whether it is filed (Filed on Acme Ltd or Not filed). Under the header, the message's attachments are shown as small tags with their sizes; click one to save it. On a narrow pane the right-hand part moves under the sender, so nothing is cut off.

A conversation shows all its messages, newest first: the subject and the number of messages at the top, then each message with its own header, separated by a thin line. Double-click a row (or press Enter) to open the same view in a window of its own. Its top row has the same Reply, Reply All and Forward arrows as the toolbar (they answer the newest message in the window that you did not send; see Replying and forwarding), and Save as File…, which saves the messages shown. Clicking an arrow there turns that window into the email you are writing, so you never have the message and the reply open as two windows.

Finding an open message window. Every message window is a window of its own, named by the message's subject, and so are the window you write an email in and Email Details (Interactions). On a Mac, right-click the TechieCRM icon in the Dock to see them listed with the main window and pick one to bring it to the front; they also show in Mission Control. On Windows they stay in front of the main TechieCRM window and share its taskbar button. They close when TechieCRM closes.

Pictures from the internet are not shown until you click Load images in that message (the line Pictures from the internet are not shown, to protect your privacy. under its header): a picture loaded from a server can tell the sender when and where you opened the message. Until then the message keeps its layout with empty spaces where those pictures go. Pictures that travel inside the message are always shown. A message you read in the pane is marked as read after 2 seconds (see Reading, flags, deleting and moving).

Dark or light messages (19 Oct 2026). Messages follow your Theme; there is nothing to set. With a dark Theme every email is dark, in the reading pane and in message windows. A message with its own dark design (many shops and newsletters have one) is shown in it. A light email is darkened: its white areas become the dark background and its black and dark grey text becomes light text, never with its colours turned inside out. Pictures, background pictures, logos and brand colours such as buttons stay as the sender made them, and text on a light coloured button stays dark so it can still be read. With a light Theme every email is shown as it was sent. When you change the Theme, open Email and message windows change at once.

The scroll bar lies over the right edge of the message instead of taking a strip of its own: it appears while you scroll (wheel or trackpad) or when you move the mouse near the right edge, and goes a moment after you stop; drag it as usual while it shows. Its colours follow your Theme. Right-click in a message for Copy, Select All and, on a link, Open Link in Browser and Copy Link.

If the browser engine cannot start on a computer (it is missing from an installation, or the system stops it), the pane switches by itself to a simpler view so your mail is always readable: each message in an outlined box with its sender, date, recipients, attachments and filed state, and a scroll bar that lies over the message and fades. In that view a message's own layout is simplified. (For support: setting the environment variable TECHIECRM_MAIL_VIEWER=text before starting TechieCRM always uses the simpler view.)

Save as File… saves the selected message as an .eml file, exactly as your mail server holds it, which any mail program opens (Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird). A conversation, or several selected rows, are saved as one .eml file per message into a folder you choose.

Reading, flags, deleting and moving

Everything here changes your mailbox on the mail server, so your phone and other mail programs see the same thing. Each change shows at once; if the server refuses it, the messages go back as they were and the header says why, in amber.

Read and unread. A message shown in the reading pane is marked as read after 2 seconds, as the Mac's Mail app does. Moving to another message sooner leaves it unread. For a conversation, only the messages the pane has shown are marked. To change the delay, right-click the list and choose Mark as Read After Viewing: after 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 seconds, or Only when I choose Mark as Read. Each person who signs in on this computer has their own setting. Mark as Read and Mark as Unread (right-click, or Edit ▸ Mark Email on the ribbon) act on every message of a selected conversation.

Flags. Flag and Unflag (right-click, or Edit ▸ Flag Email ▸ Flag / Clear Flag) act on every message of a selected conversation. Flagged messages of every account are listed under Flagged.

Decode Email (Edit on the Email ribbon) and Sync with Mail (Tools) are greyed. They are not needed: TechieCRM reads your mail accounts directly and files each message itself, so there is nothing to decode and nothing to sync. Rest the pointer on either to see this reason.

Move to Trash. 🗑️ Move to Trash on the toolbar, Move to Trash in the right-click menu, the Delete key (the delete key on a Mac keyboard) with the list selected, or Edit ▸ Delete on the ribbon moves the selected messages of an IMAP account to that account's Trash. TechieCRM never deletes IMAP mail permanently: your mail provider empties Trash. So: - inside a Trash folder the command is greyed (TechieCRM never deletes mail permanently. Your mail provider empties Trash.); - a selected conversation row moves only its messages in the mailbox you are looking at (in All Inboxes: its messages in the Inbox), never your replies in Sent. To move one particular message, open the conversation with its arrow and select that message.

Deleting POP mail. A POP account has no Trash on the server, so the same commands delete the message from the mail server. The messages leave the list at once and the header says Deleting 1 message from the mail server in 10 seconds. with Undo. Click Undo within those 10 seconds and nothing is deleted (Kept 1 message: nothing was deleted from the mail server.). Otherwise TechieCRM connects to the server, finds each message by the lasting ID the server gives it (its UIDL), deletes it and signs off, which is when the server removes it. The header then says: - Deleted 1 message from the mail server. Mail programs that check the account after this will not download it; mail they had already downloaded stays with them. - 1 message was no longer on the mail server, so it was removed from TechieCRM only. when another mail program (or your phone) had already removed it. - Could not delete 1 message from the mail server: … (in amber) when the server could not be reached or refused. The message is back in the list; try again later. - … could not be deleted: this mail server gives messages no lasting ID (UIDL) … for the rare server that has no UIDL: TechieCRM will not risk deleting the wrong message there.

Downloading never deletes anything from a POP server. If you select messages of an IMAP account and a POP account together, the IMAP ones go to their Trash and the POP ones are deleted from the server; one Undo covers both. Deleting again while an earlier POP delete is still counting down sends the earlier one at once (only the newest can be undone). If you sign out or quit during the 10 seconds, nothing is deleted.

Move to. 📁 Move to on the toolbar, or Move to ▸ in the right-click menu, lists the account's folders; the folder the messages are already in is greyed. You can also drag the selected rows onto a folder in the sidebar (show it with the sidebar button (a window outline with a panel on its left, as in the Mac's Mail app) and open the account first). A conversation row moves its messages in the mailbox you are looking at, as for Trash. Messages can only be moved within the same account, so another account's folders do not take a drop, and a selection from two accounts cannot be moved. For a POP account Move is greyed (POP accounts have no folders on the server, so their messages cannot be moved. Delete removes a message from the mail server.).

The next message opens by itself. When you delete or move the message you are reading, the next one opens straight away, as in the Mac's Mail app, so there is no extra click. Which one depends on the way you were going through the list: if you last moved down (with the arrow keys, Page Down or a click on a lower message) the message below opens; if you last moved up, the one above. At the top or bottom of the list the message on the other side opens; when nothing is left the reading pane is empty. After deleting several selected messages, the one after the last (or before the first) opens. Opening another mailbox, folder or search starts again going down. The list keeps the keyboard, so you can press Delete again to work through your mail.

Undo. After each change the header says what was done, for example Moved 2 messages to Trash., with a clickable Undo for 10 seconds. Undo moves the messages back where they came from (or marks them as they were). If a message can no longer be found (for example another mail program emptied the Trash meanwhile), the header says how many could not be moved back.

Filing an email on a client

Filing keeps an email on a client, where everyone who works with that client finds it: Clients ▸ the entry ▸ Interactions ▸ Emails (Chapter 3). It does not change your mail server: the email stays in your account. An email is saved once and linked to as many entries as it concerns: a client, its contact, another company on the email, a sale, a service ticket. Each of them lists it; it is still one email. When your Inbox and Sent are kept in the TechieCRM database, the email (and your reply in Sent) leaves the Email list once it is saved; Show saved lists it again, and Undo brings it back (see Where your Inbox and Sent are kept).

The current client's name. Select the email, then click the client's name in the row above the list (for example Acme Ltd (Bob Smith)). The email is filed at once on that entry: the contact when one is highlighted under the company in Clients, otherwise the company. Pick another entry in Clients and the name follows. With no entry selected the row reads No current client, dimmed, and nothing is written; with no email selected the name is dimmed too (Select an email to save it to Acme Ltd). One click, with Undo; it files on the current client only. The ribbon's Edit ▸ Save Email ▸ Save to Current Client does the same.

Save to Client… opens the File Email dialog. TechieCRM looks at every address on the email (From, To, Cc and Bcc, and every message of a conversation) and lists, address by address, the entries that hold that address: - Your own addresses are never offered. Yours are the accounts in Settings ▸ Email, each account's Other addresses (aliases and forwarding addresses, see below) and your user record's address. So a LinkedIn notification sent to you is matched to LinkedIn's entry, never to your own. - Pre-ticked: for an email you received, the entries that hold the sender's address; for one you sent, the entries of the To recipients. Cc and Bcc matches are listed but not ticked. When more than three entries share one address none is ticked and the row says 4 entries share this address; choose. The current client is ticked when it is one of the matches. An entry the email is already filed on shows ticked and greyed, Already filed. - Colleagues (an address that belongs to a TechieCRM user) are listed as TechieCRM user: …, not ticked: an email is filed on client entries, not on users. - An address nobody holds gets three choices. Create client… opens Add Client prefilled with the name and address (and the company from the domain, for example LinkedIn; never for Gmail, Outlook and the like); you choose Company, Individual or Contact of a company, and the new entry is added, ticked. Link to existing… finds an entry by name; Also add this address to the entry writes the address into the entry's first empty e-mail slot (Email 1, 2 or 3). That is an edit of the client record, so it needs your Clients edit right; without it the box is greyed and says why. Skip (the default) leaves the address alone. For a notification sender (noreply@, notifications@) Link to existing comes first, so a notification does not invite a new client by accident. After Create client… or Link to existing… you are back in the same dialog: that address now shows the new or linked entry, ticked, in place of its buttons; everything else you ticked stays as it was, and File is ready, so one more click files the email. - Possible matches (same company domain). When nobody holds the address, TechieCRM also looks for entries whose e-mail addresses share its company domain (gary@blowbacklasertrainer.com finds the company that holds info@blowbacklasertrainer.com, and mail.example.com counts as example.com) or whose Website is that domain. Free mail (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, iCloud and the like) never matches this way, since a shared gmail.com means nothing. The entries found are listed under the address as Possible matches (same company domain), unticked, best first: the display name on the email and the signature at the end of its text (name, title, company, phone, website) raise an entry that matches them, and each row says why: same domain, website matches, signature: Rustbelt Industries, name: Gary Bombalicki, phone matches. Each row has three options. Tick it to file the email on that entry as it is. Link adds the address to that entry's e-mail fields (its first empty slot; needs your Clients edit right, otherwise it only files) and ticks it. Create contact here opens Add Contact as a new contact under that company or individual (for a contact in the list, under its company), prefilled with the name, the address and whatever the signature gave (title, phone, website); when you save, the new contact is ticked and you are back in the same dialog. At most ten are listed per address; a note says when more share the domain (use the search below). The three address choices above stay as they are, and Create client… is prefilled from the signature too. - An email between your own addresses (a note to yourself, or a message from one of your accounts to another) has no one else on it. The dialog then lists your own addresses instead, From first, with the entries that hold them unticked, under This email is between your own addresses. Tick the entry to file on, or use Link to existing… or the search below. Only an email with no address at all says No counterpart address on this email. - A search box at the bottom finds any other entry by name or company. Highlight a result, then: Add Entry files the email on it, ticked; Link address adds one of this email's addresses to that entry's e-mail fields (its first empty slot) and files on it, ticked, in that address's group. Address to link picks which address; it starts on the sender for an email you received and on the first To recipient for one you sent. Link address edits the client record, so it needs your Clients edit right (greyed, with the reason, without it). - Enter in a search box only searches. Anywhere else in the dialog, Enter presses File. The footer counts the entries (Files on 3 entries); at most 25 per filing, and above 50 MB in total it says how much the copies will take in the CRM database. File writes the email on every ticked entry.

Save to Sale… and Save to Ticket… file the email on a sale or a service ticket. A picker lists the open sales (or tickets) of the matched clients first, then the closed ones; search finds any by name, number or company. The chosen record is filed on, and its client is ticked too (you can untick it); the matched entries are offered as in Save to Client…, so one Save to Sale can also file the email on another entry. The email then appears in the sale's or ticket's own Interactions and on the client's timeline, labelled · Sale: Website or · Ticket #12 (Chapters 3 and 4). The same two commands are in the right-click menu and on the ribbon (Edit ▸ Save Email ▸ Save to Sale / Save to Ticket). These two buttons (and their right-click and ribbon items) are hidden when the Sales or Service module is switched off for your plan, is in beta without your access, or you cannot write in it.

For now the email is saved on the client, not on the sale or ticket. Until a check of the CRM database confirms how the source CRM links an email to a sale or ticket, Save to Sale… and Save to Ticket… save the email on the ticked client entries only, and the header adds Attaching to the sale waits for the database check. (or ticket). If only the sale or ticket was ticked, nothing is saved and the header says so; tick its client to save the email there. The sale or ticket is linked as soon as the check is done, with no change on your side.

A new sale or ticket from an email

New Ticket… (and New Sale…) in the header (or its » menu in a narrow window), New Ticket from Email… / New Sale from Email… in the right-click menu, or Ribbon ▸ Edit ▸ Manage Email ▸ New Ticket from Email / New Sale from Email turn the selected email into a service ticket or a sale. Select one email or one conversation (for a conversation, the newest message you did not send is used). Then:

1. The client. TechieCRM looks up the email's addresses as Save to Client… does. When exactly one entry has the sender's address (for an email you sent: the To address), the record goes on that entry (a contact's record goes on its company, with the contact). When several entries have it and one of them is the current client, the current client is used. When none has it, the current client is used. Otherwise the Choose the Client dialog opens: the same address list, search, Create client… and Link to existing… as Save to Client…, but you tick exactly one entry and press Choose. Cancel stops here and nothing is created.
2. The Service ticket (or Sale) window opens as for a new ticket, already filled in: - Subject (a sale's Objective): the email's subject without Re:, Fwd: and the like (an email with no subject gives Email from Jane Doe). A ticket's subject holds 128 characters, a sale's objective 254. - Description: the text the sender wrote, without the quoted earlier messages below it. A long email is shortened (8,000 characters for a ticket, 1,000 for a sale) and ends with [Shortened. The whole email is saved in TechieCRM.]. - A sale's Start date is the email's date, and its Close date starts on the same date (20 Oct 2026, as on the local portal; change it before you save). A ticket's opened date is the moment you save it. - Assigned to and Assigned By (ticket) show your sign-in; you are the new record's owner, as for any ticket or sale you create. Change anything you like, including the client (the … button), then press OK (or Apply). Closing the window without saving creates nothing and saves nothing.
3. The email is saved on the new record and its client, with one Undo, exactly as Save to Sale… / Save to Ticket… would (a conversation: every message of it). The header says Ticket FP-00012 created from this email. Filed on 2 entries. (for a sale: Sale created from this email. …), with two clickable words: Open opens the new ticket or sale, Undo removes the saved email (not the ticket or sale; delete that in the Service or Sales module if you need to).

For now (see the note above) the email is saved on the client only, and the header says Ticket FP-00012 created from this email. Saved to Acme Ltd; attaching to the ticket waits for the database check. The ticket or sale itself is created either way.

If the Email window stopped checking mail while the record window was open, the record is still created and the header says the email was not saved on it; choose Check for New Mail, then use Save to Sale… / Save to Ticket…. If the message text has not arrived from the server yet, the header asks you to try again in a moment.

Other addresses for an account. In Settings ▸ Email ▸ Add… / Edit…, Other addresses takes the aliases and forwarding addresses that deliver to that mailbox, separated by commas. They count as your own addresses when you file: never matched to a client entry, and an email sent from one of them counts as sent by you (Appendix 5).

What gets filed from a conversation. - A conversation row (closed): every message of the conversation that is not filed on that entry yet, your own replies from Sent included. Each message is filed as its own email. - Messages you select under an opened conversation (click its arrow first), or rows in one row per message: only those messages.

What is kept. Each filed email is one .eml file with its attachments inside, exactly as your mail server holds it, which any mail program opens. In the CRM database it is saved the way the source CRM saves its own: one email record per entry it is filed on (a copy on the client, one on the contact, one on the sale), each with the activity note that says An email has been received from … (or has been sent to … for messages sent from one of your addresses). When your office also uses the TechieCRM database, the file is kept there once, with a link to every entry, sale and ticket it is filed on; filing the same email later on another entry adds a link, not a copy. If that database cannot be reached just then, the email is still filed, the header says The .eml copy will be added when the TechieCRM database is reachable., and TechieCRM adds it by itself later.

Afterwards. The header says what happened, for example Filed 3 messages of "Re: site visit" on Acme Ltd. 1 was already filed there. or Filed on 3 entries; already on Acme Ltd., followed by two clickable words (after New Ticket / New Sale: Open and Undo, see above): - Undo (10 seconds): removes exactly what this filing wrote on every entry (the emails, their notes and their copies). One filing, one Undo; - Open in Clients: brings Clients forward on the first entry.

The Filed column then shows ✔ (or ◐ when only some messages of a conversation are filed), and when everything selected is already filed on the current entry the client's name shows highlighted and says Already filed on Acme Ltd. An email is never filed twice on the same entry; filing it on another entry is allowed. If the CRM refuses the filing on one entry (for example TechieCRM is in read-only mode), the header names that entry and the reason; the other entries are still filed.

Deleting an email in this window never touches its filed copies. Move to Trash / Delete act on your mailbox and, where the message is still there, on the mail server, and nowhere else. An email you filed stays on every client, sale and ticket it was filed on, and its Filed mark stays. To remove a filed record, go to the module that shows it (the client's, sale's or ticket's Interactions) and delete it there; that removes that one record only (Chapter 3).

Replying and forwarding

Reply, Reply All and Forward (toolbar, right-click, the arrows at the top of a message opened in a window of its own, or Edit ▸ Respond on the ribbon, which shows the same arrows) open the email prefilled: - Reply goes to the sender (or the address they asked replies to go to); on a conversation row it answers the newest message that you did not send. - Reply All adds every other recipient, leaving out your own addresses. - Forward carries the original attachments and leaves the recipients empty. A forward also has To Many… beside To, to send it to each person separately (see To Many…: one copy for each person instead); a reply does not. - Pictures inside the message (a logo, a screenshot pasted into the email) go with a forward and show in place for the person you send it to, not as a broken picture (19 Oct 2026). On a reply they do the same when you add them with Attach ▸ Include Original Attachments. Replies quote the original under On …, Jane Doe wrote: and are sent from the account the message arrived on. The message must have finished loading in the reading pane first; if it has not, the header says so. In a message window the arrows are greyed when none of your accounts can send (pointing at them says No email account can send yet. Add one in Settings ▸ Email and mark it for sending.).

Where your reply is saved (20 Oct 2026). Every Reply, Reply All and Forward you send, from the Email window, a message window or Email Details, is saved on the client straight away, without asking, the same way on the desktop, the local portal and the web portal: - where the email you answered is filed: every client entry, sale and ticket it is on (while sales and tickets wait for the database check, the client entries only, and the header says so); - and on the client the To address belongs to: every client entry that has the address, as Save to Client… would tick it (an address that four or more entries share is asked about instead; Cc and Bcc addresses are not used). The email is stored once, with a link to each of those entries, so it shows under each one's Interactions. The header (or, from Email Details, the main window's status line) says where it was saved, for example Your reply was sent and saved on Acme Ltd and Acme Ltd (Doe, Jane)., with Open in Clients for the first entry. An entry the reply is already on is not saved on twice. In the Email window the saving happens in the background (20 Oct 2026): the header says Your reply was sent. at once, and where it was saved a moment later, so a slow CRM database never makes the window wait.

When no client has the address. If no client entry has the To address (a notification address such as noreply@… is never asked about), TechieCRM asks, in a window titled Save the reply on a client: No client has the address jane@newco.example. Add it to a client or create a client, and your reply is saved there too. - Add this address to a client opens the Save Email to Client window on your reply with Link to existing… already open for that address: find the entry, tick Also add this address to the entry if you want it kept there, then File. - Create a client opens the same window with Create client… already open, prefilled from the address (the Add Client window): save it, then File. - Not now leaves the reply where it was saved; you can still file it later from All Sent with Save to Client…. Whatever you file there is linked to the same stored email, never a second copy. If none of your entries can be searched just then (the CRM database is offline), the reply is saved where the original is and the header says the addresses were not looked up.

One window, not two. Where the reply opens depends on where you clicked: - From a message open in its own window (double-click): the window you are reading becomes the email you are writing. The message is replaced by the From, To, Cc, Bcc and Subject fields and the body with the original quoted, and the window title changes to Reply: Re: … (or Forward: Fwd: …). Send sends it and closes the window. Cancel takes the window back to the message you were reading. Closing the window (its close button, or Esc) closes it. Either way, if you have already written something, TechieCRM asks Discard this message? first. - From the Email window's toolbar, right-click menu or ribbon (the message is in the reading pane): the reading pane becomes the email you are writing. The message list and the sidebar stay where they are; only the pane changes, to the same From, To, Cc, Bcc and Subject fields and the body with the original quoted. A line above the pane says Reply: Re: … (or Forward: Fwd: …) while you write (the only time the pane has a caption); the window title does not change. While you write, the button that hides the reading pane is greyed (it would hide your email with it), and if the pane was hidden it is shown for you. Send sends it and puts the message back in the pane, and the header says Your reply was sent. (or Your message was forwarded.). If sending fails, TechieCRM says why and your email stays open so nothing is lost. Cancel puts the message you were reading back in the pane. - Leaving an email you have started. If you have already written something and you click another message in the list, choose another mailbox in the sidebar, close the Email window, or click Reply, Reply All or Forward again, TechieCRM asks Discard this message? first. Discard throws the email away and does what you asked. Cancel keeps you on your email: the list goes back to the message you are answering, and the mailbox stays as it was. If you have not written anything, there is no question: the email simply closes and the message you clicked is shown. - New Message (writing an email from scratch, not answering one) still opens in a window of its own.

Replying to a filed email (Clients ▸ Interactions). Double-click a filed email under Interactions to open Email Details. Its top row has the same three arrows as the Email window: Reply, Reply All and Forward. Clicking one turns Email Details itself into the email you are writing (the window title becomes Reply: Re: … or Forward: Fwd: …), prefilled from the filed copy of the email: the original quoted, Re: or Fwd:, the recipients, and for Forward the original attachments. On a reply, Attach ▸ Include Original Attachments adds the filed email's attachments, read from the filed copy the same way the Email window reads a message; it is greyed, with the reason, when the filed email has none or they cannot be read. When you click Send, TechieCRM saves your reply on the client at once, without asking: on every entry the original is filed on (the company, its contact, and the sale or ticket when the original was on one; see the note under A new sale or ticket from an email: for now sales and tickets wait for the database check and the reply is saved on the client entries) and on the client the To address belongs to (20 Oct 2026; see Where your reply is saved above, with the question when no client has the address), the same way as Filing an email on a client, as a message sent by you. The window then closes, the main window's status line says what was saved, for example Your reply was sent and saved on Acme Ltd and 2 more entries., and the client's Interactions list shows the reply straight away. If the save fails on an entry (for example the CRM database is offline), the email is still sent and a message says which entry and why. Cancel takes Email Details back to the email you were reading; closing the window (its close button, or Esc) closes it. Nothing is sent or saved either way, and if you had already written something, TechieCRM asks Discard this message? first. The arrows are greyed when none of your accounts can send, and hidden for an email that is only queued (it has no text to answer) and on a plan that cannot write.

Checking for new mail

TechieCRM checks all your email accounts for new mail every 5 minutes, from the moment you sign in, whether or not the Email window is open. When your Inbox and Sent are kept in the TechieCRM database, each check also notices mail saved on records since the last one (by you, a colleague or the local portal) and takes it out of the list. Unread mail in your inboxes shows as a bold red number, with no box behind it, at the top-right of the Email icon in the icon bar (every account's Inbox; Sent, Drafts, Trash and Junk are not counted; "99+" above 99). The number lifts with the icon when you point at it. Reading or marking a message read lowers it at once. To change how often, open Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email and choose Check for new mail: every 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, or Manual only (then nothing is checked by itself, and the number on the icon is the mail already on this computer). Mail is also checked whenever you open the Email window and whenever you choose Check for New Mail in it. The Email window and the icon use the same check, so an account is never signed in to twice. Each person who signs in on this computer has their own setting. If an account cannot be reached or its password is refused, the other accounts keep working and TechieCRM tries that account again less and less often (at most every 30 minutes). Choosing Check for New Mail tries it again at once. An account with no saved password is not tried until you type one in Settings ▸ Email.

When an account has a problem

Account problems are listed on the notification bell at the top left of the window (the start of the Quick Shortcuts strip, see Chapter 2, The Issues bell), one row per account, with how many times it happened and the fix. The other accounts' mail stays listed (so does the mail of the account with the problem that is already on this computer). In the Email window the account is marked ⚠ in the sidebar with a small ⚠ (point at it for the reason: "Password needed", "Sign-in refused"), and the header shows how many accounts need attention as the warning triangle and the number, for example ⚠ 13, in amber (point at it to read 13 email accounts need attention and which ones). Click it to open the bell's list.

The row says	Button on the row	What to do
no password is stored, or the server refused the password	Open Email Settings	Settings ▸ Email: select the account, Edit…, type the password (Gmail, Outlook.com with two-step verification, iCloud and Yahoo need an app password; for those addresses the row says so and names the page). TechieCRM checks it when you click OK; see Two-step verification and app passwords
the account's Microsoft, Google or Yahoo sign-in has ended	Sign in again	Settings ▸ Email: select the account and click Sign in with …
the server's security certificate could not be verified	Open Email Settings	select the account and click Test Connection (see Trusting a server's certificate)
the server could not be reached	(a notice: Dismiss)	TechieCRM keeps trying at each check; it comes back on the bell if it happens again
your email accounts could not be read	Try Again	the list of accounts on this computer could not be opened; TechieCRM does not treat that as "no accounts"

A row goes away by itself as soon as the account works again, or when you save the missing password and close Settings. A change (read, flag, move, Trash) that the server refuses is not an account problem: the header says what could not be changed, and the messages are already back as they were.

Once per sign-in, a short notice. The first time your mail is checked after you sign in, TechieCRM waits until every account has tried. If any of them could not sign in (password missing or refused, sign-in ended, or a certificate problem; a server that merely could not be reached does not count), one small window, Some email accounts can't sign in, gives a one-line summary such as "13 email accounts can't sign in: Password needed." (hover over it to see the addresses) and says that the notification bell has more information and that they can be corrected in Settings ▸ Email. It stays the same size however many accounts are affected. Open Email Settings takes you there; OK closes it. It does not come back for the rest of that sign-in, and problems that start later in the day only go to the bell. If another window is open (for example you are still signing in, or Settings is open), it waits until that window closes, and then leaves out any account you fixed in the meantime (a password you saved in Settings ▸ Email); when every account was fixed it does not appear at all. The notice never stops you using other windows: Settings, the main window and everything else keep working while it is on screen. (Corrected 9 October 2026: the notice used to open over Settings right after you saved a password in the account editor, and while it was up Settings ignored its OK and Cancel buttons.)

When no account is set up

The window shows Connect your email to see your inbox here. with: - Set up email accounts: opens Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Email to add one. - Import accounts from Apple Mail (Mac only): copies the accounts the Mac's Mail app knows (servers and user names) and says how many it added, with the same rules as Import Local Accounts… (an account's extra addresses become its Other addresses; an account already signed in with Microsoft, Google or Yahoo is left as it is). Apple Mail does not share passwords, so type each one in Settings ▸ Email (Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo need an app password). To import from Thunderbird, Outlook or Evolution as well, use Import Local Accounts… in Settings ▸ Email. - Sign in with Microsoft, Sign in with Google, Sign in with Yahoo: open Settings ▸ Email, where you click the same button to sign in. When this version cannot sign in with a provider yet, pointing at its button says so, and clicking it explains how to connect with an app password instead.

The Email list on the web portal

Two web portals, two Email pages (19 Oct 2026). On your office's local portal (the TechieCRM portal that runs on your own server), Email is your own mail, read from your own email accounts the way this chapter's The Email window describes; see Your mail on the local portal below. On the cloud web portal (techiecrm.com), Email lists the emails filed on clients, as described next: the cloud never holds your mail passwords, so it cannot read your mailbox.

The cloud's Email list. It shows the filed emails across the whole workspace, newest first, with the message body in the reading pane under the list, across the full width (19 Oct 2026: the Related panel that sat beside it is gone; the desktop's Email window has none). Columns: (icon), Subject, From, To, Client, Date, where Subject falls back to the record's description, because mail imported from the source CRM was brought over as metadata only and has no subject stored yet. One count sits under the toolbar (All), which is the workspace total and does not move when you search.

The reading pane draws every filed email the way the local portal's mailbox draws a message (EM-10, 19 Oct 2026): the round initials, sender, subject, To and Cc, the date, Filed on or Not filed, the attachments as chips (click one to download it), then the message, dark or light with your theme. That includes the emails stored by the source CRM, which are converted each time you open them, as the desktop converts them (nothing stored is changed). When part of one could not be carried over exactly (an attachment missing from the record, a date taken from the filing date), a short note in small text under the message says so. The same pane is used on the email's own page and on Documents (Chapter 17, Filed emails on the web portals).

The search box matches the subject, From, To, description and message body, so a search can find a message by something the columns do not show, and the preview pane is where you then see it. From, To and Date sort; Subject and Client cannot, and the footer says why (Chapter 20). The gear opens the workspace preferences page: there are no Email-specific settings today, and the three that used to be offered were removed because nothing read them.

Links in a message on the web (18 Oct 2026) work as on the desktop: an ordinary click on a link inside the message does nothing, and Ctrl+click (on a Mac Command+click) opens it in a new browser tab. Pointing at a link shows a tooltip saying so. The message still cannot run anything, send a form or change the portal page; the new tab is the linked website on its own, which is not told which portal page you came from. Your browser's other ways of opening a link in a new tab (a middle click, or right-click and Open Link in New Tab) also work. The Documents page, which shows the stored copy of a filed email, keeps its links switched off completely.

Your mail on the local portal

On the local portal, Email opens your own mail, laid out like the desktop's Email window (above): every account's Inbox in one list, newest first, grouped into conversations, with the message you select in the reading pane beside the list. Each person who signs in sees only their own accounts and their own mail; nobody else on the portal, an administrator included, can open them. Your accounts are added on the portal itself, in its Settings > Email (see Appendix A13, Email on the local portal); the password is kept encrypted on that server and is never sent anywhere else.

• The header (EM-9, 19 Oct 2026: the same buttons, in the same order, with the same icons and hover texts as the desktop's Email window header), from the left:
• the sidebar button (Show Mailboxes / Hide Mailboxes; hidden at first, and your choice is remembered for you on the portal);
• Save to Client…, Save to Sale… and Save to Ticket… (see Filing an email on the local portal below), then New Sale… and New Ticket… (see A new sale or ticket from an email on the local portal): icons only, the hover text gives the name and what it does;
• the current client's name: the entry you last selected in the portal's Clients page (in this browser tab), or a dim No current client. One click files the selected email on that entry (see The current client below);
• the eye (Hide Preview / Show Preview): hides the reading pane so the list takes the whole width, and shows it again. While it is hidden, nothing is opened and nothing is marked as read; it stays as you left it until you close the browser tab;
• Conversations (two speech bubbles; pressed while messages are grouped into conversations; click it for one row per message; your choice is remembered);
• the Scheduled clock, greyed: the portal sends an email when you click Send, so Send Later and the Scheduled list are not on the portal yet (clicking it says so);
• the line that says what a change did (with Undo) and the account notice (⚠ 2 in amber when two accounts need attention: point at it for 2 email accounts need attention and which ones, click it for the list of problems with what to do; see When an account has a problem on the local portal below; ⚠ Your email accounts could not be read in red when the portal could not read your account list: click it to try again);
• Search mail;
• », shown only when the window is too narrow for everything: the least used buttons move into its menu in the desktop's order (New Ticket, New Sale, Save to Ticket, Save to Sale, Conversations, the eye, Save to Client, Scheduled, then the client's name);
• New Message, with its small ▾, greyed: New Message to Many… (Email to Many) is not on the portal yet (clicking it says so);
• Reply, Reply All and Forward, side by side (see Writing and sending on the local portal below);
• Move to Trash and Move to (see Reading, flags, deleting and moving on the local portal below; greyed until you select a message, and pointing at them says why);
• Check for New Mail (point at it to see Checked just now, Checked 4 min ago ...), Email Settings (the portal's Settings > Email) and Close (leaves Email for the portal's home page, asking first if you are writing a reply).

The reading pane's place (to the right of the list or below it) is chosen in Settings > Email, as on the desktop (see Email preferences on the local portal below). - The sidebar lists All Inboxes, each account with its unread count (an account that could not sign in shows a small ⚠; point at it for the reason), every folder of each account on the mail server (open an account with its triangle; folders sit inside the folder they belong to), Flagged, All Drafts and All Sent. The number beside a folder is its unread messages. Drag the bar between the sidebar and the list to make it wider or narrower. - The list shows each message or conversation as a card: the sender (with the number of messages of a conversation, for example Jane Doe (3)), the account (when you look at more than one) and the date, the subject with ⚑ flagged, 📎 attachments and ✔ / ◐ filed, and the first lines of the message. A dot marks an unread message. Click the ▸ of a conversation (or press the right arrow key) to list its messages under it. The arrow keys move through the list. With the reading pane Below, the list is a table instead, one line per message or conversation, with the desktop's columns: the conversation's arrow, ● unread, ⚑ flagged, 📎 attachments, From, Subject, Date, Account and Filed. Account always names the account the message is in (point at it for the address), also while you look at one account's folder, as on the desktop (EM-12, 20 Oct 2026). Drag the bar between the list and the reading pane to give either more room (with the keyboard: Tab to the bar, then the arrow keys). - A message in a window of its own (20 Oct 2026): double-click a message (or right-click it, Open in New Window) and it opens in a browser window of its own, the size of the desktop's message window, as the desktop's double-click does. The window has the desktop window's buttons: Reply, Reply All and Forward (the window itself becomes the email you write; Cancel goes back to the message, Send closes the window and the Email page says what was sent and where it was saved), Save as File… and Close (or Esc). Opening the same message again brings its window to the front. If your browser blocks the window, the header says Your browser blocked the message window. Allow pop-ups for this site to open messages in a window of their own.: allow pop-ups for the portal's address in your browser's settings. - The reading pane shows the message as on the desktop: the round badge with the sender's initials, the sender, subject, To and Cc, the mailbox (Inbox - Work), the date, Filed on ... or Not filed, and the attachments as tags; click a tag to download the file. A conversation shows all its messages, newest first. Dark or light follows your theme, as on the desktop. Pictures from the internet stay hidden until you click Load images above the message, and links in a message work with Ctrl+click (Command+click on a Mac) only. - The page title says what you are looking at and how many messages it holds, as the desktop's window title does: Email(All Inboxes) - 1,234, Email(Work: Sent) - 52, Email(Search "invoice" in All Inboxes) - 7.

Checking for new mail. The portal checks your accounts when you open Email, when you click Check for New Mail, and, while the page stays open, as often as your Check for new mail preference says (every 5 minutes unless you chose otherwise; with Manual only, only on opening and on Check for New Mail); it does not check while nobody has Email open. The Email icon in the portal's left-hand menu carries the number of unread messages of your inboxes, painted on the icon's top right corner in red as the desktop's icon bar paints it (99+ above 99; point at it for 3 unread emails; no number when nothing is unread). It is read from the mail the portal already holds for you (it never connects to a mail server just to draw the number) and changes the moment a check or a change on the Email page changes it; on other pages it is the number of the last check. It reads the newest 500 messages of your Inbox, Sent and Drafts (and of the folder you are looking at), and a message's text only when you open it; both are then kept, encrypted, on the portal's server for you alone, so the page opens at once next time. Each account is checked by one page at a time; if you have Email open twice, a check that starts while the other is still running skips that account and shows what the other one found. A server that does not answer is given 10 seconds to connect and 30 seconds for each step after that, and the other accounts keep working meanwhile.

In a read-only workspace (no active licence) (19 Oct 2026), checking for new mail counts as reading, so Check for New Mail and the regular checks still work, and a message you open is still marked as read on your mail server, as on the desktop. Everything else that changes mail is refused with the read-only message: sending, filing on a client, sale or ticket, Mark as Read or Unread by hand, flags, moving, deleting and Undo.

Reading, flags, deleting and moving on the local portal

(19 Oct 2026) These work as in the desktop's Email window (Reading, flags, deleting and moving above) and change your mailbox on the mail server, so your phone and other mail programs see the same thing. The result of each change is one line of text in the header, before Search mail, with a clickable Undo for 10 seconds (and ✕ to close it sooner); if the server refuses a change, the line says why in amber and the messages are shown as they were. What Undo needs is kept for one day in your mail cache on the portal, then removed at the next check (EM-12, 20 Oct 2026; it was seven days); a reply kept for filing on a client keeps its seven days.

• Choosing messages. Click a card to read it. Ctrl+click (Command+click on a Mac) adds a card to the selection or takes it out; Shift+click selects every card from the last one you clicked. The up and down arrow keys move through the list (with Shift they extend the selection), and so do Page Up, Page Down, Home and End. With several messages selected, the reading pane says how many.
• Read and unread. A message shown alone in the reading pane is marked as read after 2 seconds (or the delay you chose: see Email preferences on the local portal below); moving to another message sooner leaves it unread. For a conversation, only the messages the pane has shown are marked. With Only when I choose Mark as Read, nothing is marked by itself.
• The right-click menu on a card: Open in New Window (20 Oct 2026, the message in a window of its own, see above), Save as File… (see below), Reply, Reply All, Forward, the filing commands, Mark as Read, Mark as Unread, Flag, Unflag, Move to (the account's folders, the folder the messages are already in greyed), Move to Trash (Delete from Server for a POP account, Delete when both kinds are selected), Link into One Conversation, Unlink from Conversation, Return to Automatic Grouping, Show One Row per Message, Mark as Read After Viewing (the delay choices, the current one ticked) and Check for New Mail. A greyed item says why when you point at it.
• Save as File… downloads the selected messages exactly as the mail server holds them, as .eml files any mail program opens: one message is Subject 2026-10-19.eml; several (or a conversation) come as one .zip file holding an .eml for each, because a browser cannot be given a folder to save into as the desktop is. Mark, Flag and Unflag act on every message of a selected conversation. Flagged messages of every account are listed under Flagged in the sidebar.
• Move to Trash (the header's bin, the menu, or the Delete key, or delete on a Mac keyboard, with the list selected) moves IMAP messages to that account's Trash: the portal never deletes mail permanently, and inside a Trash folder the command is greyed. A conversation card moves only its messages in the mailbox you are looking at, never your replies in Sent.
• POP accounts have no Trash on the server, so Delete deletes the message from the mail server: it leaves the list at once and the header says Deleting 1 message from the mail server in 10 seconds. with Undo. Undo within those 10 seconds and nothing is deleted. Otherwise the portal deletes it then and says Deleted 1 message from the mail server. (or why it could not). (EM-9, 19 Oct 2026, as on the desktop) The delete is sent only when its 10 seconds end while the page is still open. If you leave the page during the 10 seconds (another mailbox in the sidebar, another page of the portal, or closing the browser tab), nothing is deleted and the message comes back in the list, as when you sign out of or quit the desktop during them. (If the browser could not tell the portal as it closed, the message comes back at the first check a minute or more after its 10 seconds; a check never sends a delete.) Deleting again during the 10 seconds sends the earlier delete at once; only the newest can be undone.
• Move to (the header's folder button, or the menu) lists the account's folders. You can also drag the selected cards onto a folder in the sidebar (show it with the sidebar button and open the account first); a folder of another account does not take the drop, and a POP account's messages cannot be moved.
• The next message opens by itself after Move to Trash or Move, in the direction you were going through the list: the message below if you last moved down (arrow key or a click on a lower card), the one above if you last moved up; at the top or bottom of the list, the one on the other side; nothing when the list is empty. The list keeps the keyboard, so you can press Delete again to work through your mail. The number in the page title drops at once.
• Conversations can be fixed by hand exactly as on the desktop (Fixing a conversation by hand): Link into One Conversation (select two or more cards of the same account), Unlink from Conversation (open the conversation with its arrow and select the message) and Return to Automatic Grouping, each with Undo. Your corrections, and whether Conversations is on, are kept for you on the portal, in every browser you use.

Searching the mail server

Search mail first looks through the mail already on the portal (the newest 500 messages of each folder it has read), as on the desktop. Under the results the list then offers Search the mail server for "…": click it and the portal asks each account's mail server for every message of the mailbox you are looking at that contains all the words, older mail and words inside the message text included (at most 200 per folder). The results are listed with Results from the mail server for "…" above them and open, flag, move and delete like any other message; Show the matches in the mail loaded here goes back. A POP account cannot be searched on its server: its messages already on the portal are searched instead, and the header says so.

Writing and sending on the local portal

(19 Oct 2026) You write email on the portal the way you do in the desktop's compose window (The compose window above), and it goes out through your own account's outgoing server, from the address you choose, exactly as the desktop sends it.

• Where to start. In the Email page's header, after Search mail: New Message (the pencil) opens a page of its own to write on; Reply, Reply All and Forward put the email you are writing in place of the message in the reading pane, as the desktop's Email window does (the list and the sidebar stay; a line above the email says Reply: Re: … or Forward: Fwd: …). They are also at the top of the right-click menu of a message. Reply on a conversation answers its newest message that you did not send. These are greyed, saying why, until one of your accounts can send (Settings > Email: an outgoing server and Send from this account), and Reply, Reply All and Forward need one message or conversation selected.
• What is filled in. The same as on the desktop: Reply goes to the sender (or the address they asked replies to go to), Reply All adds every other recipient but you, Re: or Fwd: once, the original quoted under On …, Jane Doe wrote: (or the Forwarded message block), and From is the account the message arrived on. The reply keeps the conversation together in every mail program (the threading headers are the original's). Pictures from the internet in the quoted original are not loaded while you write (so the sender is not told you opened it); they go out with your email as they came. Pictures that came inside the original (a logo, a screenshot) go with a forward, and with a reply when you include the original attachments, and show in place for the recipient, as from the desktop (19 Oct 2026).
• The top row: Cancel, Aa (shows or hides the format bar: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text and background colour, lists, indent, alignment, link, clear formatting, undo and redo; your choice is remembered in this browser), Attach (the paper clip: Attach Files…, and on a reply or forward Include Original Attachments, greyed with the reason when there are none or they are already attached; a forward carries them from the start), then the round Send.
• The rows: To, Cc, Bcc, Subject with the priority pop-up (High, Normal, Low: High and Low travel with the email; Normal sends nothing extra), and From with the Signature pop-up. Reply-To is not offered on the portal yet.
• Addresses suggested as you type. In To, Cc and Bcc, after two letters (about a fifth of a second after you stop typing), a list of matching addresses opens, written Name (Company) <address>: your workspace's clients (companies, individuals and contacts whose first name, last name, "first last", company or address starts with what you typed), then the addresses you sent to from the portal and the people who wrote to you (yours alone), then your own accounts; at most 20. Up and Down move, Enter, Return or Tab puts the address in followed by a comma, Esc closes the list. You can always type any address and separate addresses with commas or semicolons.
• Signatures. The default signature of the From address is in the message when it opens, and changes when you change From (none when that address has none): in a new message below the line you type on, in a reply or forward between that line and the quoted original. The Signature pop-up chooses another one or None; a signature is never in the message twice. Edit Signatures… opens Settings > Email's Signatures section in a new tab (choose the signature again afterwards to take your changes). Your signatures on the portal are kept on the portal (Appendix A13, Signatures).
• Attachments. Attach Files…, or drop files anywhere on the email; a picture pasted into the message is attached as a file too. Each attachment is a tag with its name, size and a small ✕ to remove it. An email can be at most 25 MB with its attachments (the desktop's Send Later limit and about what mail servers accept); a file that would go over it is refused with the size, and so is an empty file.
• Send (or Ctrl+Enter, Command+Enter on a Mac). While the portal hands the message to your mail server, a small ring of turning dots (in your Primary and Accent colours) takes the button's place, and Send and Cancel are greyed. Choosing another message or mailbox, Delete, Move or another Reply meanwhile keeps you on your email and the header says Sending… wait a moment. When it has gone, the message you were reading is back in the pane and the header says Your reply was sent., Your message was forwarded. or Your message was sent. (New Message goes back to the Email page, which says it). If sending fails, the email stays as you wrote it and the reason is shown above it, in the server's words made plain: a recipient the server refused (The mail server refused these recipients: …), a password the server refused, a certificate that could not be verified (trust it on Settings > Email with Test sign-in), a server that does not offer a secure connection (… so the password was not sent), or a connection lost while sending (The email may not have been sent: check your Sent folder before you send it again). The same email is never sent twice: a second click, or Send in a second tab, says so instead.
• Your Sent folder. The portal puts a copy of the email (with who got the blind copy) in the account's Sent folder on the mail server, as a mail program does, so your phone and your other mail programs see it. Gmail, Microsoft (Outlook.com, Hotmail, Microsoft 365), Yahoo and iCloud keep that copy themselves, so the portal does not add a second one there (Yahoo and iCloud since 20 Oct 2026). A POP account has no Sent folder on the server: no copy is kept. If your mail was being checked at that moment, the header adds A copy could not be put in your Sent folder: your mail was being checked.
• Links to files on a computer. The portal cannot read the files on your computer, so it cannot attach a file for you from a link as the desktop does. When the message holds a link to a file on a computer or the office network (a file:// link or a \\server\share path), Send lists them first: attach the files with Attach instead, click Send as is (the link's words go, without the link), or Cancel.
• Leaving an email you have started. Choosing another message or mailbox, Delete, Move, another Reply, Cancel or closing the browser tab asks Discard this message? What you have written will be lost. first; with nothing written, it simply closes.
• Writing to a client. With a client selected in Clients, the ribbon's Write ▸ Email opens New Message for that client: To holds the client's address, and a line above the email says Filed on Acme Ltd when it is sent. When it has gone, it is filed on that client exactly as the desktop files an email written from a client (the source CRM's own email record with its An email has been sent to … note). Do not file on that line sends it without filing. Without an office database on the portal it is sent and not filed, and the header says so (the desktop needs its source CRM database for this too).
• A reply, reply all or forward is saved on the client when it is sent (20 Oct 2026), as on the desktop (Where your reply is saved above): where the email you answered is filed and on the client the To address belongs to, stored once with a link to each, and the header says where, with Undo. When no client has the To address, the portal asks No client has the address …: Add this address to a client and Create a client open the Save Email to Client window on your reply (Your reply, to …) with Link to existing… or Create client… already open; a line under it names where the reply is already saved (Saved on Acme Ltd., at most five names, then and 2 more; 20 Oct 2026), since the list below shows only the To addresses; File there links the same stored email. Not now closes the question. Without a CRM user ID linked (when the portal has an office database) the reply is sent and the header says why it was not saved. A reply sent from a message window shows its result, and the question, on the Email page.
• Not on the portal: To Many, Send Later and the Scheduled list (the desktop's), Send via Mail.app and the emoji picker.

Filing an email on the local portal

(19 Oct 2026) Filing on the portal is the desktop's filing (Filing an email on a client above), done by the same program code the desktop uses, so an email filed on the portal is stored exactly as one filed on the desktop: in the CRM database, one email record per entry it is filed on, each with its activity note (An email has been received from …, or has been sent to … for a message sent from one of your addresses); in the TechieCRM database, the email once, as one .eml file with its attachments, linked to every entry. Everyone in the office sees it on the client in Clients ▸ Interactions ▸ Emails, on the desktop and on the portal.

• Where to start. Select a message (or a conversation, which files every message of it, your replies in Sent included), then Save to Client…, Save to Sale… or Save to Ticket… in the header (just after the sidebar button, as on the desktop), or the same three in the right-click menu. Save to Sale… and Save to Ticket… are not shown when the Sales or Service module is closed to you. They are greyed until a message is selected.
• The current client (EM-9, 19 Oct 2026, as the desktop's one-click filing). The header shows the name of the entry you last selected in the portal's Clients page in this browser tab (a contact row gives the contact, Acme Ltd (Doe, Jane); a company or individual gives itself; a User row, or nothing selected yet, gives a dim No current client). One click on the name files the selected email (or every message of a selected conversation) on that entry straight away, without the dialog: the same filing as Save to Client… with only that entry ticked, the same Undo in the header for 10 seconds, the same records on both databases. Pointing at the name says what a click does: Save this email to Acme Ltd, Select an email to save it to Acme Ltd (greyed while nothing is selected), Already filed on Acme Ltd (the name shows pressed, and a click only says so). The right-click menu has the same command, File on Acme Ltd (or Save to Current Client, greyed, with no client). On a portal with an office database, a person with no CRM user ID linked is refused with the same words as the dialog (the hover text says it too); without an office database the email is saved in the TechieCRM database only, as the dialog does. Selecting a record in Sales, Service or another list does not change the current client: only the Clients page does.
• The File Email dialog works as the desktop's: every address on the email is listed with the entries that hold it; the sender of an email you received (the To recipients of one you sent) is ticked; your own addresses are never offered (your accounts in Settings > Email, their other addresses and your sign-in address); colleagues are listed as TechieCRM user: … and never ticked; an entry the email is already filed on is ticked and greyed, Already filed. An address nobody holds shows No entry has this address and, under Possible matches (same company domain), the entries that share its company domain or website, best first, each saying why (name: Gary Bombalicki, signature: Rustbelt Industries, same domain, phone matches); tick one to file on it. Search for another entry at the bottom finds any entry by name or company; Add Entry adds it, ticked. Enter in a search box only searches. The footer counts the entries (Files on 3 entries., at most 25) and says how much the copies take when the email is large. File files the email.
• An address nobody holds (EM-8, 19 Oct 2026) has the desktop's three choices, which open a small form in place (the dialog stays open):
• Create client… asks What kind of entry is this address? (Company, Individual or Contact of a company…, which then asks which company it belongs to) and shows the new entry's fields already filled in from the address and the email's signature: first and last name, company (from the signature, else the address's domain; never for Gmail, Outlook and the like), title, phone, email and website. A company is named by its company name. Create writes the entry into the office database exactly as the desktop's Add Client does (you are its owner), with the address as its Email 1; the address then shows the new entry, ticked.
• Link to existing… finds an entry by name; Also add this address to the entry writes the address into the entry's first empty e-mail slot (Email 1, 2 or 3). That changes the client record, so it needs your Clients access and an office database; without them the box is greyed and the entry is only filed on. Link ticks the entry in place of the buttons, saying Linked, address added as Email 2 (or address already on the entry). For a notification sender (noreply@) Link to existing comes first.
• Skip (what happens to an address you leave alone) changes nothing.
• Each possible match has Link (add the address to that entry and tick it, as above) and Create contact here (a new contact under that company or individual, prefilled with the name, the address and what the signature gave; it is ticked when created).
• Link address beside a search result adds the address chosen in Address to link (it starts on the sender of an email you received, the first To of one you sent) to that entry, then ticks it.
• Creating and linking need the office database (as on the desktop, which cannot create an entry without its CRM database): on a portal without one, Create client… says so and creates nothing, and Link files on the entry without adding the address. Nothing you create here can be undone from the Email page; remove an entry you did not want in Clients.
• Save to Sale… / Save to Ticket… list the open sales (or tickets) of the matched clients first, then the closed ones; the search finds any by name, number or company. Choosing one ticks its client too. As on the desktop, for now the email is saved on the client, not on the sale or ticket, and the header adds Attaching to the sale waits for the database check. (see the note under Filing an email on a client above).
• Afterwards the header says what was filed, in the desktop's words (Filed on 2 entries., Already filed on Acme Ltd.), with Undo for 10 seconds: Undo removes exactly what this filing wrote on every entry. The message's card then shows ✔ (or ◐), and the reading pane says Filed on Acme Ltd above the message, with each client's name a link to its page. The link opens the client in a new browser tab, so the Email page stays where you were (EM-12, 20 Oct 2026).
• The office database. The portal writes the CRM database it was connected to on Config database (Appendix A13), with your CRM user ID as the owner of what it writes, as the desktop writes with yours. If you have never signed in to the portal with SQL Server and your CRM user ID, the portal does not know it, and filing says Filing on the office database needs your CRM user ID. and writes nothing: sign out, sign in once with SQL Server and your CRM user ID (it is remembered), and file again. A portal without an office database files in the TechieCRM database only, linked to each entry you tick (the dialog says so), as the desktop does without one.
• Not on the portal yet: the desktop's current client button (one-click filing on the entry selected in Clients). A read-only workspace files and creates nothing (the header says why).

A new sale or ticket from an email on the local portal

(EM-8, 19 Oct 2026) New Ticket… (the wrench) and New Sale… (the bag) in the header, after the filing buttons, or New Ticket from Email… / New Sale from Email… in the right-click menu, turn the selected email into a service ticket or a sale, as on the desktop (A new sale or ticket from an email above). Select one email or one conversation (for a conversation, its newest message you did not send is used). The buttons are not shown when the Service or Sales module is closed to you, and are greyed, saying why, in a read-only workspace.

1. The client. When exactly one entry holds the sender's address (for an email you sent: the To address), the record goes on it. Otherwise (several entries, or none) the Choose the Client dialog opens: the same address list, search, Create client… and Link to existing… as Save to Client…, but you tick exactly one entry and press Choose. The portal has no current client yet, so it never picks one for you.
2. The form opens, already filled in: Subject (a sale's Objective) is the email's subject without Re:, Fwd: and the like (128 characters for a ticket, 254 for a sale); Description is the text the sender wrote, without the quoted earlier messages (shortened for a long email); a sale's Start date is the email's date, its Close date starts on the same day, its Stage list is your office's (first stage chosen) and Forecast revenue is empty; a ticket's Priority and Severity start on Medium. Change client… asks again. You own the new record (a ticket is assigned to you), as for any record you create on the desktop.
3. Create Ticket (or Create Sale) writes the record into the office database with the desktop's own program code, then saves the email (a conversation: every message of it) on its client with one Undo, and the header says, for example, Ticket FP-00012 created from this email. Saved to Acme Ltd; attaching to the ticket waits for the database check. As on the desktop, for now the email is saved on the client, not on the record (see the note under Filing an email on a client). Undo removes the saved email, never the ticket or sale. A double click creates one record only. If something is wrong (no subject, a stage that is not your office's), the form stays open and says what.

• The office database is needed. The record is written into the CRM database set up on Config database, with your CRM user ID as its owner. Without an office database the portal creates nothing and says Creating a ticket from an email needs the office database, as on the desktop. (the desktop cannot create one without its CRM database either). Without your CRM user ID linked, it says Filing on the office database needs your CRM user ID. and writes nothing: sign out, sign in once with SQL Server and your CRM user ID, and try again.
• Open (20 Oct 2026): the portal's Service and Sales pages show TechieCRM's copy of a record, which arrives once the office database is copied, so the notice offers Open (the record's page, in a new tab) only when that copy is already there; until then it names the new ticket or sale without a link. (The desktop's Open opens the new record's window at once.) Not offered on either surface while they are switched off: assigning the new ticket to someone else and a new entry's Category (household).

Email preferences on the local portal

(19 Oct 2026) The desktop's Email preferences, kept for you on the portal (every browser you open the portal in uses them; they are separate from the desktop's, which are kept on each computer). Change them on the portal's Settings > Email page, section Email window (Appendix A13), or from the Email page itself where the desktop offers them:

Preference	Choices (default first)	Also changed from
Check for new mail	every 5 minutes; every minute, 2, 10, 15 or 30 minutes; Manual only	Settings > Email only
Reading pane	Right (columns): the list as cards on the left, the message on the right; Below (rows): the table with the message under it	Settings > Email only, as on the desktop (the header's eye hides or shows the pane; it does not move it)
Conversations	on (messages grouped by thread); off (one row per message)	the header's Conversations button and the right-click menu's Show One Row per Message
Mark as read	after 2 seconds; 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds; Only when I choose Mark as Read	the right-click menu's Mark as Read After Viewing

A change in Settings > Email is used the next time the Email page is opened; a change from the Email page is used at once.

The portal remembers where you were

(19 Oct 2026) As on the desktop (The Email window remembers where you were above), opening Email takes you back to where you were: the mailbox or folder, the message you had selected (it opens in the reading pane), how far down the list you were, the accounts you had opened in the sidebar, whether the sidebar was shown, and the sizes you dragged the bars to (the list's size is kept separately for Right and Below). Your search is not kept: Email opens on the mailbox you searched, without the search.

• If the message has gone (deleted or moved in another mail program), the list opens at the top with nothing selected.
• If the folder has gone from the mail server, or its account was removed, Email opens on All Inboxes, and what you were looking at stays remembered: if the folder or account comes back (an account added again with the same address counts), Email opens there again.
• Clicking a mailbox in the sidebar opens it at the top, as on the desktop; only opening Email itself puts back the message and the scroll position.
• The portal remembers this for you, on the portal, so it is the same in every browser and on every computer you open the portal from. The desktop remembers it on each computer, separately.

When an account has a problem on the local portal

(19 Oct 2026) When the portal cannot check one of your accounts, the header shows ⚠ N in amber (point at it: 1 email account needs attention, and each account with its reason) and the account shows a small ⚠ in the sidebar. Click ⚠ N for the list of the problems, each in the desktop's words with what to do:

Problem	What the list says	What to do
The password was refused	work@example.com could not sign in, the server's reason, and for Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and iCloud what that provider needs (an app password)	Open Email Settings: the account's page in Settings > Email; type the password (or app password) again
No password saved	Password needed for work@example.com	Open Email Settings: type it
The server's certificate is not trusted	Certificate problem with work@example.com	Open Email Settings: Test sign-in shows the certificate and Trust This Certificate
The provider's sign-in ended	Sign in again to work@example.com	Sign in again opens the account's page
The server did not answer	work@example.com could not be reached ... keeps trying at the next check for new mail	nothing: the next check tries again

Check for New Mail at the foot of the list checks again at once; Close (or Esc) closes it. The same problems are listed at the top of the portal's notification bell (its number counts them), on every page, each opening the account's page in Settings > Email. They are not saved anywhere: a problem leaves the list and the bell the moment a check of that account works.

Not yet available

In the Email window, these arrive in the next updates: - moving messages from one account to another (move them within an account, or use your usual mail program); - choosing single messages of a conversation by clicking them in the reading pane (open the conversation with its arrow and select them in the list instead); - Create Client and Open Client from the right-click menu; - searching the mail on the server rather than the mail loaded on this computer; - new mail appearing the moment it arrives (today it is checked on the schedule above).

POP accounts have no folders other than the Inbox. Incoming mail is never filed automatically.

Connecting your email program

macOS Mail: "File in TechieCRM" quick action. TechieCRM installs a Services entry automatically: select a message in Mail, then Mail ▸ Services ▸ File in TechieCRM; TechieCRM comes forward with the standard File-to-Client dialog (clients matched by the sender and recipients, search for the rest), the same filing as Save to Client (including the source-CRM copy and duplicate protection); afterwards it says how many emails were filed, or why one was not. Assign it a keyboard shortcut in System Settings ▸ Keyboard ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts ▸ Services if you use it a lot.

Outlook: the "Save to TechieCRM" add-in (Windows, Mac, and Outlook on the web). Add it once from Outlook ▸ Get Add-ins ▸ My add-ins ▸ Add from URL using the manifest link on the download page (your IT can deploy it organisation-wide from the Microsoft 365 admin centre). It puts a Save to TechieCRM button on every open email: the pane shows the matched clients, you pick, and the email lands in the client's Interactions timeline. Sign in with your TechieCRM web account the first time.