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Archiving emails with EN


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Hi.  Perhaps I'm missing something in a simple setting but I've been thinking about using EN to archive some emails but it seems that I have a dilemma when it comes to parts of the email such as the "to:", "from:" and other data.  If I forward the message to my EN address, only the subject and the body of the message make its way into the note so one cannot see when the message was sent/received or to/from whom it was sen/received.  If I forward as an attachment, it shows up as an .eml file which means I can't search it.  This seems pretty obvious so I'm prepared to feel foolish if someone tells me there's a simple setting switch I've overlooked but I can't seem to figure this out.  Is there a simple way to get messages into EN with the other data included?  I can see why one would want this stuff stripped for other purposes (such as forwarding oneself a note) but if there is a way to do both, it would seem pretty awesome.

Thanks for any insight/help!!

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38 minutes ago, JohnGalt said:

If I forward the message to my EN address, only the subject and the body of the message ...

When I forward a message, the forward header lines are stripped (to me, from me)  
 but the original header lines are retained 

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Hmm.  I looked at my mail client and it seems to have been doing something more along the lines of a "redirect" than forward.  If I forward it directly, DTLow is right, only the forward header lines are stripped.  Thanks for the insight!

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  • Evernote Expert

I use the Thunderbird Email program.

If I use the Evernote add-on for Thunderbird to forward Emails then the note has the same Title as the original Email subject.

If, instead, I select Forward and enter the Evernote Email by hand then the message arrives containing the From/To/Reply-To/Subject in the body of the note.  The note title is FWD: Original_Subject unless I remember to remove FWD prior to hitting send.

If I am forwarding an Email sent to my Gmail account and use the Evernote-Gmail plugin inside Gmail then the resulting note has the tidiest resulting note laid out as you might require.

My conclusion is that it depends entirely upon the Email program and the information it sends when you forward. Evernote just accepts what it receives.

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So, in thinking about this more, as DTLow pointed out, when forwarding, the forwarding header info is stripped out leaving the original header.  As agsteele points out, things differ from client to client.  I tried to bcc myself on an email because I want to set a reminder to follow up but what ended up in EN was the subject line in the title field and the body of the message in the body of the note.  That's good but is there a clever way to get the date and recipient of the email into EN? without having to circle back and forward stuff to myself?  Adding my EN address as a bcc is simple but  I send a number of emails out each day and would like to use EN to follow up but I will not likely be able to keep everything straight if the date and name of the recipient is missing.  

Any insight is appreciated!

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Personally on the Mac mail client I use the „Redirect“ option to send emails to my EN account. This creates an e-mail that is looking as the original one, without the wrapping level „Forward“ will create.

Working good for me.

The only downside is the iOS client has no Redirect option, so mail created from there will have this sort of ugly look from Forwarding. Technically spoken it makes no difference in content or possibilities to follow up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have been the same issue now that I'm completing the info of old notes. If it wasn't a reply or forwarding a message, the data of receivers is not saved by evernote. 

 

Therefore, if I send a new message, with BBC to evernote, I will not be able in the future to know to whom I sent the message

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You can always define a use case not covered by a system, and then „prove“ it does not work.

EN has the ability to receive emails you forward to it.

It was never advertised as your future mail archive. It does not have the features to archive emails as a mail client will do, and it does not pretend to have these features. It is ok to receive and store emails received and forwarded to your EN account.

If you think EN should add a feature, you can use the feedback function build into the clients.

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I agree with PinkElephant and perhaps I used a bad choice of worse words when saying archive. I really use it to follow up on emails on some future date. However in order to help me know which date and to refresh my memory about the topic, having the date of the original email and the recipients would be helpful. I was just wondering if there’s a clever way to either add a date and a recipient to the Evernote note without having to separately forward a copy of the message to myself. 

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14 hours ago, JohnGalt said:

I was just wondering if there’s a clever way to either add a date and a recipient to the Evernote note

Hi.  Not within Evernote.  If you BCC an email it just gets sent to the BCC address as though that were the only recipient,  so there's no additional information in that email to add to a note.  You'd need a separate forwarding process to include a full copy of the sent mail.  That might be achieved by some form of automation so you don't have to do it manually,  but I just use a magic button that will forward a chosen email to my account when and if I need to.  Edit: (My mail has a feature that copies all sent mail back to my inbox)

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  • Evernote Expert

The only means of doing this would be to add the date to the subject line of the Email. Of course the recipients would see that too but it might not be too troublesome.

You could add a reminder to the note by adding the dat with a '!' delimitter.

I guess that you will remember the subject line syntax for notes generated from Emails:

[Title of note] ![optional date for reminder] @[notebook] #[tag]

date format is: yyyy/mm/dd so no time available.

I can't think of a means of adding a recipient other than typing that into the Email.  That, of course, is another option for the date as well.

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