Connect your mail

Connect your mailboxes so the messages you flag show up in NotaBene, ready to become notes and tasks.

Once a mailbox is connected, flag a message anywhere — in Outlook, in Apple Mail, on the web, on your phone — and it appears under Mail in the sidebar, in a section for the mailbox it came from.

Mailboxes are connected in Settings ▸ Mail, which has two sections: Outlook for Microsoft mailboxes, and IMAP for everything else — iCloud, Gmail, Seznam, a company server.

Connect an Outlook mailbox

Open Settings ▸ Mail.
In the Outlook section, sign in to your Microsoft account.
Repeat for each Microsoft mailbox you have.

An Outlook mailbox is connected on each device separately: signing in on the Mac does not sign in your iPhone.

Connect any other mailbox

Open Settings ▸ Mail ▸ IMAP and choose Connect a Mailbox….
Type the e-mail address and the password.

NotaBene finds the server by itself for iCloud, Gmail, Seznam, Yahoo, Fastmail and Centrum, and makes a guess for other addresses. Only if that fails do fields for the server and port appear.

Some providers — iCloud, Gmail and Yahoo — want an app password rather than your account password. NotaBene tells you so before you try, with a link to the page where you make one. A Microsoft address typed here is pointed to the Outlook section, because Microsoft no longer allows IMAP.

An IMAP mailbox is set up once for all your devices: the mailbox travels with your library, and the password with iCloud Keychain. When the password has not reached a device yet, an orange key appears beside that mailbox in Mail. Tap it to go to Settings ▸ Mail, where that mailbox is already asking for its password; type it, and Mail goes on.

Order and disconnect

Drag a mailbox by its grip to change its place — a blue line shows where it will land. Mail lists the mailboxes in the same order. To disconnect a mailbox, use the red minus beside it; NotaBene asks first.

Your mail stays as it is

NotaBene only reads your mail. It never changes it:

It never clears a flag, in Outlook or in an IMAP mailbox.
An IMAP Inbox is opened read-only, so nothing NotaBene does can change it. Reading a message in NotaBene does not mark it read in your mailbox.
Dealing with a message in NotaBene only takes it off NotaBene's own list. That travels between your devices with the rest of your library, whichever kind of mailbox the message is in.
Your IMAP password is kept in the keychain — never in your library or in iCloud Drive. Disconnecting removes it from all your devices and changes nothing on the mail server.

Refresh asks Outlook what is flagged now, and syncs — so a message you dealt with on the Mac is gone from the list on your iPhone.

While you are in Mail, the toolbar carries only what belongs to mail, not the controls of the note editor.