Import older email

A Gmail mailbox brings in its last 30 or 7 days when you connect it. To see older conversations on customers' profiles and in search, run an import from Settings > Imports > Email history. The Email history link on the Email settings page opens the same place.

You need the admin role and a connected Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox. Addresses set up with forwarding only receive new mail, so they cannot be imported this way.

Run an import#

1. Open Settings > Imports and choose Email history.

2. In Mailbox, pick the mailbox.

3. Set From and To; both days are included. The import reaches back two years at most. The form suggests a date one year back for From, and for To the day before the mailbox's own import began, which is exactly the gap it missed.

4. Leave Open them as closed tickets on unless you want old conversations in your open views. A customer's new reply reopens a closed ticket as usual.

5. Click Start import. It runs in the background, so you can leave the page.

To import an address you have not connected yet, connect it first with From now on or a short window, then import the dates before that.

What the import does#

• It reads the mailbox's inbox conversations in the chosen dates and opens a ticket for each one the helpdesk does not hold yet, with every message inside the dates.

• It sends nothing, and no rule, HTTP integration or satisfaction survey acts on what it brings in. It reopens no ticket.

• A message that is already in the helpdesk is skipped, so you can run overlapping imports safely.

• Spam, trash and drafts are skipped, as are conversations your mailbox started that nobody answered.

• When Only import mail sent to is set on the mailbox, the import follows the same filter.

• When Label imported mail in Gmail is on, the imported messages get the label in Gmail too.

Follow its progress#

Your import appears under Email imports with its mailbox, dates and status: Waiting to start, Importing, Finished, Failed or Cancelled. While it runs, the list refreshes by itself and counts the conversations read, messages brought in, new tickets and messages left out. Messages are left out when they were already here, were sent by the helpdesk, fall outside the address filter or fall outside the dates.

One import runs at a time per mailbox. Large mailboxes take a while: the import uses less than half of the speed Gmail allows a mailbox, so new mail and replies keep flowing, and it pauses by itself when Gmail asks it to slow down.

When it ends, you get an email, unless you switched off An email history import I started finishes or fails in Settings > Notifications.

Cancel an import#

Click Cancel on a running import and confirm with Cancel import. What it brought in so far stays in the helpdesk.

If an import fails#

An import that fails five runs in a row stops with a message saying why. If Google stopped accepting the mailbox's connection, the import ends and the mailbox shows Needs reconnecting: reconnect it in Settings > Email and start the import again. Mail it already brought in is skipped the second time.