Where your drafts are saved

Every reply and new message you type in HQ is saved as you go. The draft lives in HQ first, and a copy is pushed to your mailbox's Drafts folder (Gmail, Outlook or your mail server) a few seconds after each change, so you can pick it up on your phone or in the mailbox's own app.

Finding a draft

Open Mail and choose Drafts in the left column. A reply also shows on its own thread as a Draft card, and opening the thread reopens the reply where you left it.

On your phone

Tap Mailboxes at the top of Mail, then Drafts under the mailbox. Tapping a draft opens it in the composer, ready to carry on where you left off. Each one also carries Discard draft, which asks you to confirm and then deletes it. Inside the composer, Discard does the same; Save or going back keeps the draft.

Drafts do not swipe, and they carry no star or flag: Archive, Delete, Unread and Star (Flag on an Outlook or IMAP mailbox) are things you do to mail you have received, and a draft is not that yet.

A reply still shows on its own conversation as a Draft card, with Edit, Send and Discard. Discard asks you to confirm, because a discarded draft cannot be brought back, and it tells you if the mailbox refuses.

Changing which mailbox a new email is from

On a new email, changing From to another of your mailboxes moves the saved draft into that mailbox's Drafts folder: its copy is saved there, and the copy in the first mailbox is removed a moment later. If something goes wrong in between, you may briefly see it in both; it is never in neither, and HQ always keeps the draft itself. A reply stays with its conversation's mailbox, and a draft that already carries files saved in the first mailbox stays there, so the files are not lost. It still sends from the mailbox you picked.

"Not saved to Outlook yet"

If the mailbox refuses the copy, the reply shows a short amber line under the text: Not saved to Outlook yet (or Gmail, or your mail server), with the reason the mailbox gave. Your text is safe in HQ. HQ tries again on its own, and the line disappears once the copy lands.

If the line stays for more than a few minutes, the reason beneath it is what to send to support. A mailbox that has asked you to reconnect (the banner at the top of Mail) cannot take drafts until you do.

What you see in Gmail or Outlook

The copy in your mailbox may lag a few seconds behind what you typed in HQ. If it looks nearly empty while HQ has the full text, the copy is behind: the amber line above tells you why, and the full text is still in HQ. Sending from HQ always sends the HQ copy.

When you send

A draft stays in Drafts until the message has actually gone. Sending gives you a few seconds to Undo; if you do, the message comes back into the composer (or back into Drafts if you have started something else). If the mail provider refuses the send, the draft is kept so you can try again.

Editing the copy elsewhere

A draft you edit in Gmail or Outlook web is picked up by HQ within a couple of minutes, as long as you have not changed it in HQ since. When both have changed, the HQ version wins.

Typing that has not saved yet

If the connection drops while you type, HQ keeps what you typed on this device until it can save it, and puts it back in the composer if the page reloads. It is only ever given back to the person who typed it.

If your session times out, the text waits for you to sign back in. If you sign out, it is deleted, so the next person to use the device never sees it. Let the draft save before you sign out.