Mail Reader

Mail Reader lets you read your own email inside the admin. It connects to any standard IMAP mail server and never changes anything there: nothing is marked as read, moved, deleted or sent.

What it does

• Three panes: Folders, the message list and the message itself. Drag the dividers to resize them.
• Several mailboxes per person. Each person sees only their own mailboxes; nobody else in the admin can see them.
• Read-only by design. Opening a message does not mark it as read on the server, so your phone or desktop mail app still shows exactly what you have and have not read.
• Remote images are blocked until you ask for them.
• Attachments can be downloaded.
• An unread count on the Mail Reader sidebar item, taken from each mailbox's Inbox.

Mail Reader is free. For sending, replying, flags, moving, deleting and search, see "Mail Reader or Email Pro" below.

Getting started

You need your mailbox's IMAP details from your email provider: the server name, port, username and password.

1. Open Mail Reader from the admin sidebar.
2. If no mailbox is set up yet, click Add a mailbox. Otherwise click the cog at the top of the Folders pane (Mail account settings).
3. On the Mailboxes tab, click Add mailbox.
4. Fill in:
   • Name - what to call this mailbox, for example "Office".
   • IMAP server - for example mail.example.com.
   • Port - 993 for TLS, 143 without.
   • Username and Password.
   • Use TLS (port 993) - leave ticked unless your provider says otherwise. Ticking or unticking it switches the port between 993 and 143 until you type a port yourself.
5. Click Test connection. Fix anything it reports.
6. Click Save. Your folders appear on the left.

Screens

Folders

• Click a folder to list its messages. Folders that cannot hold mail are hidden.
• The cog opens Mail Settings.

Message list

• Newest first, 50 messages a page. Use Newer and Older to page. The picker between them shows 25, 50, 100 or 200 a page instead; this browser remembers your choice, and changing it keeps you at the same messages.
• Icons on a row show high priority, messages you have replied to, and attachments.
• Refresh (the circular arrow) fetches the list again.
• Right-click a message for Open, Copy sender's address, Copy subject and Add sender to contacts. The last one is shown only when the Contacts Tool is switched on, and is greyed out when the sender is already in your contacts.

Message

• The header shows who sent it and when. Click Show headers for Reply-To, all recipients and the message id; Hide headers folds them again. Your choice is remembered.
• Messages are shown in a locked-down frame: scripts in email never run.
• If a message has remote images, a notice says how many were blocked. Click Load images to load them for this message only. Loading them tells the sender you opened it.
• Always from (followed by the sender's address) trusts that sender, so their images load straight away in future. It appears only when Offer to remember senders is on (see Settings).
• Click an attachment to download it.
• Right-click the message itself (or press Shift+F10 or the menu key while reading it) for Copy when you have selected some text, plus the message list's menu. Right-clicking a link or picture in the message gives your browser's own menu.

Keyboard

Press ? to see the list.

Key	Does
Up and Down, or j and k	Move through the list
Left and Right	Move between folders and messages
Enter	Open
Esc	Clear the selection
?	Show the shortcut list

The list also names shortcuts for replying, starring and deleting. In Mail Reader they do nothing; they work only in Email Pro.

Settings

Click the cog in the Folders pane to open Mail Settings. It has three tabs.

Mailboxes

Lists your mailboxes with Edit and Remove, plus Add mailbox.

• When you edit a mailbox, leave Password blank to keep the saved one.
• Remove forgets the mailbox and deletes its stored password. Nothing on the mail server changes.
• Passwords are stored encrypted on the server and are never sent back to the browser.

Images

• Lists the senders you trust. Their remote images load without asking. Click Stop trusting to remove one.
• Offer to remember senders switches trusted senders on or off for the current mailbox. Switching it off ignores the list but keeps it.

Diagnostics

Shows what the screen knows about itself: the build it is running, the mailbox and folder, and recent errors. Click Copy diagnostics to copy it for a support request. It never shows passwords.

Site-wide options

Whoever runs the site can change these in the plugin's configuration file (config/plugins.json). There is no screen for them.

Option	Default	Meaning
listLimit	50	Messages per page until you pick another size under the list
allowRemoteImages	false	Load remote images without asking
allowInsecureTLS	false	Accept mail server certificates that do not verify (see Tips)
allowPrivateMailHosts	false	Let a mailbox be on the site's own private network (a LAN or loopback address). Off, a mailbox on such an address is refused; the site's own outgoing server is always allowed
connectionTimeoutMs	20000	How long to wait for a mail server, in milliseconds
maxConnections	20	Most mail server connections kept open at once
maxMessageBytes	25000000	Largest message that will be opened, in bytes

Permissions and roles

In System > Roles, Mail Reader uses the Email permission in the Plugins group. It has one action:

Action	Label	Allows
email.read	Use	Add your own mailboxes and read them

Only the admin role has it by default. To let other staff read their own mail here, give their role Email > Use. Even with this permission, people only ever see their own mailboxes.

Email Pro uses the same Email permission.

Tips

• Use the mail server's real name. If Test connection says "The mail server's TLS certificate could not be verified", the server name you typed probably does not match the name on the server's certificate. This often happens with a name like mail.yourdomain.com when the provider's certificate is issued for their own host name. Ask your provider for the exact IMAP host name (the one their certificate covers) and use that. Your mailbox is the same either way.
• Only set allowInsecureTLS to true for a mail server you control that has a self-signed certificate. It turns off the check that the server is who it says it is, for every mailbox on the site.
• Other error messages mean:
  • "That mail server hostname could not be resolved" - check the spelling of IMAP server.
  • "The mail server refused the connection on that port" - check Port and Use TLS.
  • "The mail server rejected that username and password" - check the login details. Some providers need an app password.
• Your pane widths and folded folders are remembered in your browser, and carry over if you move to Email Pro.

Mail Reader or Email Pro

	Mail Reader (free)	Email Pro (paid)
Read mail, folders, attachments	Yes	Yes
Marks mail as read on the server	Never	Yes, like any mail app
Send, reply, forward, drafts	No	Yes
Flag, move, delete, spam	No	Yes
Search and conversations	No	Yes
Rules, away message, send later, snooze	No	Yes
Needs MongoDB	No	For search, conversations, rules, send later, snooze and the away message. Without it, reading, filing and sending still work.

When Email Pro is installed it takes over from Mail Reader. Your saved mailboxes, passwords and trusted senders carry across.

Limitations

• Read only. It cannot send, reply, mark as read, flag, move or delete.
• No search, and no conversation (thread) view.
• IMAP only. There is no sign-in with Google or Microsoft accounts; use the provider's IMAP settings and, where needed, an app password.
• The unread badge counts each mailbox's Inbox only. It is refreshed at most once a minute.
• Mail connections are kept by the running site. The site must run as a single server process; several worker processes for one site are not supported.