Connect a Gmail, Outlook or IMAP mailbox

HQ works from your existing mailbox:

1. Go to Settings (the Email tab).
2. Under Email Accounts, click + Add email account for Gmail or Outlook, or Connect another mailbox (IMAP) for any other provider.
3. For Gmail/Outlook, pick Connect with Google or Connect with Microsoft and approve access in the window that opens. For IMAP, enter your email address, password, and the Incoming mail server (IMAP) and Outgoing mail server (SMTP) names your provider gives, then press Connect mailbox. The server names start blank: your provider's help pages list them. 993 and 465 are the usual ports; use 587 for an outgoing server that uses STARTTLS.

If an IMAP connect says the mail server refused your email and password, the usual cause is that the provider wants an app password. Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo and Outlook.com all do: create one in your provider's security settings and enter it instead of your normal password. If HQ says it could not reach the server or could not open a secure connection, check the IMAP server name and port your provider gives (993 is the usual port).

Your mail then syncs into HQ. You can connect more than one mailbox; the most recently connected one is the active view. Each plan includes a number of connected mailboxes (the Free plan includes one). If you are at your plan's limit, connecting another mailbox shows a "Plan limit reached" message: remove a mailbox you no longer use, or upgrade under Settings › Billing.

Reconnecting a mailbox you already have never counts against the limit.

Every message offers its mailbox's own mark and a Pin. Point at a message in the list and they appear at the right end of its subject line; one you have set stays there. The reading pane has the same two buttons in its toolbar.

• A Gmail mailbox has Star, an Outlook or IMAP mailbox has Flag, the same mark Gmail and Outlook themselves use, and it stays in step both ways. A star you set in HQ is a star in Gmail, and a star set in Gmail shows in HQ. Flag a message in HQ and it is flagged in Outlook or your other mail app, and a flag you set there shows in HQ within a couple of minutes (on an IMAP mailbox, for mail in the inbox). A flag Outlook has marked complete counts as not flagged. Apple Mail shows a Gmail star as a flag: it is the same mark.
• Pin keeps a conversation at the top of the inbox until you unpin it, as Outlook does. A reply arriving in a pinned conversation keeps it pinned. A pin stays in HQ: Microsoft does not let other apps read or set Outlook's own pin, so a pin set in HQ does not show in Outlook, and one set in Outlook does not show in HQ.
• On your phone, open the message and tap More…: Pin and Unpin sit on the bottom row beside the star or flag, and a pinned conversation carries a Pinned tag in the inbox.

Each mailbox's card in Settings (the Email tab) names its provider, Gmail, Outlook or IMAP. Auto Bill Extraction on the card is the whole bills answer for that mailbox: tick it and HQ reads new mail there for bills and receipts, untick it and HQ stops. It says "not set yet" until you decide.

You do not have to do this during setup. If you read your email somewhere else and want HQ for the invoicing and the books, choose I'll connect email later on the setup screen and connect one here whenever you like. See "Start without connecting a mailbox".

In the desktop app, each mailbox you connect also gets its own tab at the left of the tab strip. On a mailbox's card in Settings (the Email tab), Show a tab for this mailbox turns that tab off without disconnecting anything. See Keep several screens open at once.

For a Gmail or Outlook mailbox, your saved contacts come across too. The people in your address book appear under Contacts in the Email Contacts group with an Address Book badge, and they rank first in the To: suggestions when you compose. Adding a person with + Add contact saves them back to Gmail or Outlook, and a name or company you edit in HQ is pushed there. In the desktop app, Contacts has a tab of its own and opens on the mailbox you were last in. With more than one mailbox connected, the Mailbox menu at the top of Contacts picks another: the contacts, the senders and + Add contact all follow the mailbox it names.

To remove a saved contact from Gmail or Outlook, open Contacts, choose Email Contacts, click Edit on the person, then Delete from Google Contacts (or Delete from Outlook contacts) and confirm. The confirmation names the mailbox whose address book it comes out of. The button only appears for a contact saved in that address book: Gmail's auto-suggested "Other contacts", Outlook's list of people you correspond with, and addresses HQ only knows from your mail cannot be deleted this way. HQ may still suggest the address when you write an email, from your mail history. Deleting a contact profile in HQ is a different action and never changes Gmail or Outlook. Gmail also shares the people it has auto-suggested to you, and Outlook shares the people you correspond with most, so those appear in the suggestions without a badge. An IMAP mailbox has no address book, so its suggestions come only from the mail itself.

If an account later shows a warning, click ⚠ Reconnect on its card to re-authorize: this keeps your existing history.

If a business and its mailbox were moved to another HQ login, the card in the old account says Moved to that login instead, and connecting the mailbox there again is refused. Sign in as the new login to use it.

If your Microsoft 365 administrator changes your Outlook email address (for example when the business moves to a new domain and keeps the old address as an alias), reconnecting finds the same mailbox rather than adding a second one. Its history stays, it does not count as another mailbox on your plan, and its card shows the new address.

To stop using a mailbox, click the bin icon on its card. HQ asks which of two things you want, and neither changes anything in Gmail, Outlook or your email provider:

• Disconnect stops syncing and keeps HQ's copy of the emails, filters and AI training. The mailbox stays in the list and reconnecting picks up where you left off.
• Disconnect and erase also deletes HQ's copy of that mailbox: its emails, drafts, scheduled emails, filters, reply rules, AI instructions, knowledge library and contact profiles. Bills already in your books stay. This can't be undone.

Switching mailboxes on your phone

Your mailboxes, and the folders in each one, have their own screen. From any mail folder, tap the Mail tab in the bottom bar, or Mailboxes at the top of the folder. Your mailboxes come first, each with its email address, how it connects and how many unread messages are waiting, and the one you are reading is marked Current. Tap one to go to its inbox.

Below them, each mailbox has its own list of folders, in the same order: Inbox, Filtered, Action items, Starred (Flagged on an Outlook or IMAP mailbox), Drafts, Sent and Archived, plus Outbox and Snoozed while they hold something, then Trash and Spam (on Outlook, Deleted Items and Junk Email). Last comes Labels (on Outlook, Folders): tap it to unfold that mailbox's own labels or folders. Tap a folder to open it; if it belongs to a mailbox you were not reading, HQ switches to that mailbox first. Tap a mailbox's address to fold its folders away, and again to bring them back. More also gets you there, under Active email account.

In the app on your iPhone's Home Screen you swipe in from the left edge of the screen instead, as in Apple Mail: from an open email it takes you back to the folder you opened it from, and from a folder it takes you to Mailboxes. There, the folder has no Mailboxes button at the top; the swipe and the Mail tab do its job.

Reconnecting from your phone

Mailboxes ask to be signed in to again every so often, and for a Gmail or an Outlook account you can do it from your phone. Open Mailboxes as above and choose the one marked Reconnect. That includes the mailbox you are reading right now: if its row says Reconnect, tapping it starts the sign-in rather than taking you back to the inbox. Your phone takes you to Google or Microsoft to sign in and brings you back. A red dot on Mailboxes at the top of a mail folder (beside the folder's name in the iPhone app) is how you know one of them is waiting to be signed in to again.

Your phone is usually the easiest place to do this, because the password is already saved there and you are often still signed in to the provider.

A mailbox you connected with a password rather than through Google or Microsoft is the exception. Those need the password typed in again, and that screen is only on a computer: open HQ there, go to Settings, and re-enter it. Your phone will tell you so rather than sending you to the wrong sign-in page.

One rule to know: an address can only be connected under one provider at a time. If an address is already connected (say over IMAP) and you try to connect the same address through Google or Microsoft, HQ refuses and changes nothing, because switching providers replaces the stored sign-in and is not something to do by accident.

If you have moved an address to a different provider and want to keep its history, get in touch before you connect it again. We move the mailbox across for you, so your messages, categories, rules and action items stay attached to it instead of being replaced.

Removing an account does not change how its address connects: it clears the stored sign-in but keeps the account, so connecting the same address under a different provider is still refused.