An IMAP account

IMAP is how a mail app reads a mailbox. If your team's mail already lands in a mailbox at Fastmail, iCloud, your web host or your own server, Jelly can read it the same way. There's nothing to forward, and nothing in the mailbox changes.

An IMAP account only brings mail in. For replies, pair it with the same provider's SMTP server. (Postmark, or a Google account connected for sending only, work too.) The email setup sets up both halves together, and fills in the server details for well-known providers.

What Jelly does to the mailbox

Jelly only reads. It doesn't mark messages as read, move them or delete them, and archiving or trashing a conversation in Jelly leaves the mailbox as it was.

It reads two folders. From the inbox it brings in every message, whoever it's addressed to, so connect a mailbox that holds only the team's mail and not a person's own. From the Sent folder it picks up replies your team sends from a mail app, and puts them in the right conversations. Mail that a rule at your provider files into another folder isn't read.

The one thing Jelly can add to the mailbox is a copy of each reply in the Sent folder.

Before you start

You'll need your provider's IMAP settings. They're the details a mail app asks for, and you'll usually find them in the provider's help pages under "IMAP settings":

• the server's host name, such as imap.fastmail.com;
• the port and the kind of encryption, usually 993 with TLS;
• the username, usually the full email address, and its password.

Many providers want an app password here: a separate password you create in the provider's security settings. Some also need IMAP access switched on for the account first. The table of common providers lists their servers.

Jelly signs in with a username and password. It can't go through a "Sign in with Microsoft" or "Sign in with Google" page. Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com usually refuse password sign-in, so forward their mail instead: see Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com.

Connecting an account

1. Go to Settings → Connections → IMAP and press Connect an IMAP account.

2. Fill in the form:

   Name	What the team calls the account. Leave it blank to use the username.
   Host	The host name only, such as imap.example.com. Leave out https://, the port and any path.
   Connection security	TLS (usually port 993) or STARTTLS (usually port 143). Choose None only for a server on your own network.
   Port	Leave it blank to use the usual port for the security you chose.
   Username and Password	Usually the full email address and its password or app password.

3. Press Connect the account. Jelly tests the connection before saving anything. If the test fails, the page says The connection test failed and gives the reason. Correct the details, type the password again, and try once more.

4. On the account's page, under Addresses this account carries, tick the addresses whose mail lands in this mailbox. Each tick saves straight away.

5. Press Sync now to bring mail in straight away. Otherwise Jelly reads the account within five minutes.

The password is never shown again. If you edit the account later, leave Password blank to keep the saved one.

How Jelly reads the account

The first time, Jelly brings in recent mail: the latest 100 messages from the inbox and the latest 100 from the Sent folder. Nobody is notified about these, and autoresponders and forwarding rules ignore them. Older mail stays only in the mailbox.

After that, Jelly checks every five minutes and brings in whatever is new, so a message can take a few minutes to appear. Sync now checks at once. The account's page, under Reading the account, says when Jelly last read it.

Choosing which addresses

Ticking an address under Addresses this account carries tells Jelly that the address's mail lands in this mailbox. Addresses then shows it as receiving through this account, and its replies are copied into the account's Sent folder if the sent-mail copy is on.

The ticks aren't a filter. Everything in the mailbox's inbox comes in, and a message addressed to none of the team's addresses is filed under the default address.

They don't decide how an address sends, either. You choose that on an SMTP server's page, so for a Fastmail mailbox, say, you'd add an IMAP account and an SMTP server and tick the same addresses on both. Addresses that a Google account handles aren't listed.

The sent-mail copy

When Keep a copy of sent mail in this account is on, Jelly puts a copy of each reply into the account's Sent folder, for every address the account carries. Anyone who opens the same mailbox in a mail app then sees the team's replies there too.

On Royal Jelly and the trial, the copy is already on if Jelly found a Sent folder when you connected the account. To check or change it, open the account's page and look under Sent mail. Turn Keep a copy of sent mail in this account on or off, check that Sent folder names the right folder (usually Sent), and press Save.

A copy is made after the reply has gone, so a problem with the copy never holds a reply up. If one fails, the account's page says so under The last read or copy did not go.

Keeping it working

Each account shows how it's doing:

The account's page has what you need to put things right:

• Test the connection signs in and out again, and tells you which folder is the Sent folder.
• Read the latest 100 again is for when something seems to be missing. Mail that's already in Jelly is skipped, and nobody is notified.
• Save the account, under The account, saves changed details. Test the connection again afterwards.

When a connection test fails, the reason starts with the step that went wrong:

If the account's page says Jelly won't read the folder named in Sent folder, the server doesn't treat that folder as its Sent folder. Change the name to the server's real one. The inbox is read as usual in the meantime.

Removing an account

On the account's page, choose Remove <name>… under Remove the account and confirm. Jelly forgets the account and its password. Nothing on the mail server changes, and the mail already in Jelly stays. The addresses stay too. They go on receiving through anything else that's connected for them, and their replies are no longer copied to the mailbox.

Server settings for common providers

These are the settings for IMAP and for an SMTP server. The email setup fills them in for you when your address is at one of these providers' own domains, such as @fastmail.com, or is hosted by Google. For an address at your own domain, type them in yourself.

Most of these providers want an app password rather than your usual one. When the email setup fills in a provider's servers, it also tells you where to make that provider's app password.

For Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, see Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com.