How to save emails and newsletters into your notes
The short answer: forward them to an address that turns mail into notes, if your notes app has one, or through a service or automation if it doesn't. Whichever you use, make sure the note keeps who sent it and a way back to the original, and that it lands next to your other notes rather than in a separate pile you won't reopen.
The ways to do it
- Copy and paste.Works everywhere and costs nothing, but you lose the sender, the date and the link unless you add them by hand, and it's enough friction that most good emails never make it.
- Your notes app's own email address.Some notes apps give you an address to forward mail to; Evernote is the best known. This is the least effort once it's set up.
- A plugin or service.Obsidian and Notion don't have an address built in. For Obsidian there are plugins and email-to-Markdown services that write into your vault; for Notion, automation tools such as Zapier can create a page from each email.
- A read-later app.Readers such as Readwise Reader and Instapaper give you an address to send newsletters to. They're good for reading, but what you keep there sits apart from your own notes.
What makes a saved email useful later
- Filed by who wrote it. A forwarded investor update should sit under the investor, not under you, the person who forwarded it.
- One note per newsletter, not one per issue.Fifty separate notes from the same newsletter bury everything else. One running note, newest on top, doesn't.
- Attachments read, not just attached.If the PDF's text isn't searchable, the most important part of the email is invisible.
- Only mail you trust. An address anyone can send to is an address anyone can fill. Sender approval stops that.
- It comes back when it matters. The reason to keep an email is a later moment: writing the board update, preparing for the call. Saving is only half the job.
Where Digital Notebook fits
Your notebook gets its own address, such as yourname@in.thenotebook.site. Forward anything to it and it becomes a note, filed under the person who originally wrote it. Subscribe a newsletter to it and every issue builds one note, newest on top, with the unsubscribe clutter taken out. PDF attachments are read so their contents can come back too. Mail from anyone you haven't approved waits for your OK before it becomes a note.
Then, when you're writing about something an email covered, the relevant passage appears beside what you're writing.
What to know:email arrives as ordinary email and is sealed the moment it reaches us, so it's private from then on but not end-to-end encrypted, because the sender's mail never was. The address belongs to the web notebook, so it needs an account. The desktop app doesn't receive email: it keeps your notebook in a folder on your computer, with no inbox on our servers.
Common questions
Can I forward an email to Obsidian or Notion?
Neither has a built-in address to forward mail to. People use a plugin, an email-to-Markdown service that writes into their vault, or an automation tool such as Zapier to create a Notion page from each email.
Should newsletters go in my notes or a read-later app?
A read-later app is better for reading. Your notes are better for keeping: the one idea from an issue that you will want when you are working on something. Many people read in one place and save the good paragraph to their notes.
Is it safe to give my notes app an email address?
Only if it checks who is sending. Otherwise anyone who learns the address can put things in your notes. Look for sender approval or a secret address you can change.