Import your contacts from your mailbox

An empty CRM on day one means hours of data entry before you can find a client. Yet your real contacts are already there: they are the people you write to.

When you connect your Gmail or Outlook mailbox, Joinways creates the contacts and companies you wrote to over the last 12 months, then adds each new person you write to. Nothing to start: the import runs on its own after the connection.

What you'll learn

• What Joinways imports from your mailbox, and what it leaves out.
• When the import runs, depending on the type of mailbox.
• What is kept and who sees the contacts created.
• Tidy up after the first import.

Prerequisites

• A Gmail or Outlook mailbox connected in "Settings" > "My mailbox", open to every member. See Connect Gmail or Connect Outlook.
• Or an inquiries address connected directly from the "Inquiries mailbox" card, by an owner or admin.

1. What gets imported

• The people you wrote to: the recipients (To and Cc) of your sent messages. Someone who only wrote to you is not imported: newsletters, notifications and cold outreach stay out.
• Their company, worked out from their address's domain. An existing company is reused. Consumer domains such as gmail.com or outlook.com create no company.
• Their name, taken from the display name in the email or, failing that, from the address: jean.dupont@… becomes Jean Dupont.

Ignored: your own address, service addresses (noreply, contact@, info@, reservation@…) and technical bounce addresses. A contact that already exists with the same address is not duplicated and keeps its origin.

2. When the import runs

• Personal mailbox ("My mailbox"): a single pass over your sent messages from the last 12 months, right after the connection. After that, each email you send to a new person creates their contact as the sync runs.
• Inquiries address connected directly: the same single 12-month pass, with no ongoing import afterwards. Its incoming emails become inquiries, not contacts.
• Address received through forwarding, a Google Group, a distribution list or a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox: no contact import.

The 12-month pass never runs again on its own, even if you reconnect the mailbox: no duplicates pile up.

3. What is kept

The import reads addresses, not correspondence: this pass does not copy the content of your sent messages. Only the list of contacts and companies it produces is kept.

These records belong to the workspace, like all others: your team sees them in "Clients" ("Companies" and "People") and can edit them.

If an email you sent bounces because the address does not exist, Joinways removes the contact created from that address, along with its company, as long as no one has edited or used them.

4. Tidy up after the first import

Several hundred contacts can appear at once. Give the list ten minutes:

1. Open "Clients" and go through the new contacts in "People".
2. Merge obvious duplicates with "Merge with another contact", on the record.
3. Delete what is clearly not a client or partner.

Good to know: there is no switch to turn the import off in the interface. If you do not want it to run on a mailbox, write to us before connecting it.

Example: a new sales manager

Claire joins Hôtel Maison Aubriot and connects her Outlook mailbox on day one. A few minutes later, the 340 people she wrote to over the past year are in "People", linked to 180 companies. She merges three duplicates, deletes two office-supply vendors, and finds her clients by name before creating her first event.

Troubleshooting

No contact was created

Cause: the mailbox has few sent messages over 12 months, or it arrives through forwarding. Solution: check that it is connected directly, in "My mailbox" or as "Connected directly" on the "Inquiries mailbox" card.

Contacts I never followed have appeared

Cause: you wrote to them at some point, and that is all the import looks at. Solution: delete them. The 12-month pass does not come back, but a new email you send them from your personal mailbox recreates the contact.

A contact has no company

Cause: their address is on a consumer domain, which says nothing about where they work. Solution: link the company by hand on the record.

Frequently asked questions

Can my teammates see my emails?

The import only shares contacts and companies. It does not copy the content of your messages.

Does the import change an existing contact?

No. A contact already present with the same address is matched, not duplicated, and keeps its origin (manual entry, file import, form).

What happens if I reconnect my mailbox?

The 12-month pass does not run again. Only the new recipients of your next emails are added.

See also

• Connect Gmail
• Connect Outlook
• Manage people (contacts)
• Manage companies