# How to Organize Emails in DEVONthink

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/how-to-organize-emails-in-devonthink/87724>\
**Category:** Blog\
**Created:** [September 29, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/how-to-organize-emails-in-devonthink/87724 "2026-09-29T06:00:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eboehnisch](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/eboehnisch/32/38699_2.png) [@eboehnisch](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/eboehnisch)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/how-to-organize-emails-in-devonthink/87724/1 "2026-09-29T06:00:44Z")

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![emails](https://devontech-discourse.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/3X/c/8/c88819e900e897edeae2145190d808703c36b77c.jpeg)

With the Pro or Server edition of [DEVONthink](https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink), you can [archive and organize your emails](https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink/office) in your databases. Fortunately, emails have certain identifying attributes you can use for finding, organizing, or acting on those documents.

These email attributes aren’t interchangeable, so it’s worth being clear about their distinction.

- _Author_: the name of who is sending the email.
- _From_: The sender’s email address.
- _Recipient_: the name of who receives the email.
- _To_: The recipient’s email address.
- _Subject_: The subject line of the email.

If you **use tags for your organizing** , enable DEVONthink’s _Settings \> Files \> Tags \> Convert properties to tags_. Imported emails will be tagged with all the properties available on the email, except the subject. You can now view emails in the tags of your database. Also, these tags can be used on any other items in your database, e.g., tagging a project or an invoice with specific vendor or peoples’ names.

While tags can still be used, another approach is **creating smart groups** (or smart rules), with criteria matching on those fields. For a broad match, add criteria _Kind is Email_ and _Recipient is_ `Darth Vader`. If the person has multiple email addresses, you can instead use _To is_ `skyw_anakin@empire.gov`. Or get even more specific by including a subject, e.g., _Subject is_ `Sink dripping in Detention Block AA-23, sub-level five, Cell 2187`.

You can also create a smart group to match certain email attributes and then run different commands on them, including filing, labeling, assessing via external AI, etc. Or even **create a smart rule** and use an event trigger like _On Import_, to process your emails automatically.

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**Author:** ![leehammond](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/leehammond/32/18180_2.png) [@leehammond](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/leehammond)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2026, 6:51pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/how-to-organize-emails-in-devonthink/87724/2 "2026-09-29T18:51:17Z")

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This would be very useful to a CRM system I’ve developed that makes use of tags for Contacts and Organizations and alias’s for both.

I’d like to have the Author name property and From email property follow my existing structure:

1. Don’t create a new tag if one already exists (it would be nested under contact/[author])
2. Don’t create a new tag for the from email if it is an alias associated with another tag. Alternatively if I nested the email under the author tag (ie. contact/author/email) don’t create a new one if it already exists.

I’d appreciate any feedback on this. Thank you.

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**Author:** ![BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/bluefrog/32/135_2.png) [@BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/BLUEFROG)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2026, 8:49pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/how-to-organize-emails-in-devonthink/87724/3 "2026-09-29T20:49:18Z")

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The _Author_ and _From_ are static values from the emails. If you want a different behavior, you’ll need to script it.