Email to Vault

Things worth keeping arrive by email — a receipt, a confirmation, a thread you want to think about — and getting them into Obsidian means copying, pasting and re-saving the attachments by hand. This plugin makes an email address the way into your vault: send or forward mail to it and each message becomes a note, with From, To, CC, Subject, Body and attachments preserved.

Use the built-in disposable mailbox (Mail.tm) for a one-click address that needs no account, or connect your own IMAP server — Gmail, Outlook, self-hosted — and keep everything on infrastructure you already trust. No backend and no paid service either way. Inspired by Save emails into Evernote.

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note explaining what it does and why you would want it, and walking you through it.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Email to Vault: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading email-to-vault-demo-vault-<version>.zip (<version> is the release version) from the Releases.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

[!NOTE]

Unlike most demo vaults, this one cannot pre-bake its feature: it fetches real mail from a live service over the network. The notes walk you through configuring your own inbox instead.

What it does

• Two email modes — a disposable Mail.tm mailbox created in one click, or your own IMAP server. IMAP is desktop only; Mail.tm works everywhere. 01 Create a mailbox · 02 IMAP mode
• Automatic sync — the plugin checks for new mail periodically and saves each message as a note, with full metadata and attachments. 03 Email notes and commands
• Notes shaped the way you want — path and body come from templates, so an email can land anywhere under any name with whatever frontmatter you choose. 04 Settings
• Preserve read state — optionally leave messages untouched on the server, so they stay unread in your other email clients while still being archived here. 04 Settings
• Know where your mail goes. Mail.tm routes messages through a third party; IMAP does not. The difference is spelled out rather than buried. 05 Privacy and data handling

[!WARNING]

In Mail.tm mode, emails are routed through the third-party service mail.tm and retained there for up to 7 days. Do not send sensitive information — use at your own risk. See 05 Privacy and data handling.

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin are hidden.

To show them, run the following command in the DevTools Console:

window.DEBUG.enable('email-to-vault');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov