Reading Mail

Opening a Message

Press Enter on a message in the list to open it in the reading pane (or in a new tab or window, depending on your Reading Mode setting in Settings → General).

Press Ctrl+Enter to open a message in a new tab regardless of the Reading Mode setting.

Reading Pane

The reading pane renders HTML messages with WebView2. Links open in your default browser.

Links have a context menu. With a link focused, press Shift+F10 or the Applications key (or right-click it) for Open, Copy Address, and — when the link’s text is not simply its address again — Copy Text. On an email address link a New Message to This Address entry (last in the menu) opens a new message in QuickMail, instead of handing the address to whichever mail client Windows has registered. A copy that works says nothing — it did what you asked, and it clears any earlier failure notice. A copy that fails writes a line at the end of the message, starting QuickMail:, saying what could not be copied. Read to the end of the message to find it. In the reading pane and in a tab it also goes to the status bar, so Ctrl+9 reads back the most recent one.

That line is not usually spoken as it appears: it is written just as the menu closes, while your screen reader is announcing its way back into the message, so it arrives in the middle of that and is passed over. It is there to be found rather than to interrupt — which is the right trade for something that only happens when the clipboard is briefly held by another program. Copying the address is how you check where a link actually goes before following it, and comparing it with the link’s text is how you spot one that does not go where it says it does. Closing the menu returns you to the link you opened it on, not to the top of the message. The menu is offered for ordinary web and email links; it does not appear on the Accept / Tentative / Decline buttons of a meeting invitation, which are internal to QuickMail.

Pictures. Pictures sent inside a message are shown; pictures a message links to on the web are not loaded, and their descriptions are shown instead, so no message can tell its sender you opened it. See Pictures for what is shown and when, the setting that controls it, and how pictures are kept safe.

Press F6 or Shift+F6 to move between the reading pane and other panes.

Plain Text View

Toggle a sticky preference to read all messages as plain text instead of HTML. When on, QuickMail renders each message from its original plain-text part (or from text extracted from the HTML if the sender included no plain-text part). This gives a cleaner, low-noise read — useful when you want a simpler layout, or when you want to inspect a suspicious message’s raw text.

Toggle plain text view three ways:

The setting persists across app restarts and applies to the reading pane, message tabs, and standalone message windows. When a message has no plain-text part, QuickMail shows a note before the extracted text: “This message has no plain-text version; showing text extracted from the HTML.”

Message Windows

When Reading Mode is set to Window, messages open in a separate window. Each window has a full menu bar (File, Message, Navigate), a toolbar, and a command palette. Shortcuts work the same as in the main window:

Deleting a message from its window closes the window and returns focus to the originating position in the message list.

Attachments on a Received Message

When a message has attachments, they appear in an attachments list just below the header fields (Subject, From, To, Date). This works the same way in all three reading modes — reading pane, tab, and window.

Reach the attachment list in either of two ways:

• Press Alt+A to jump straight to it from anywhere in the open message. If the message has no attachments, QuickMail announces “No attachments.”
• Press Shift+Tab from the message body to step back into the header area; when the message has attachments, focus lands on the attachment list.

Once focus is on the list, arrow between attachments and use:

Saving and Printing Messages

You can save a message to a file, or print it. Save and Save As… act on everything selected: one message, several selected messages, or a whole conversation or sender group when its heading is selected. Print acts on one message.

All three are on the File menu, and Save As and Print are also on a message’s context menu. They work the same way in the reading pane, a tab, and a message window, and they are in the command palette.

Formats. You can save a message in four formats:

• Email message (.eml). The original message exactly as your mail server holds it, attachments included. Any mail program can open it, and so can Windows. This is the default, and it is the only format that keeps everything.
• Text file (.txt). A block of details, then the message’s own text. It opens in Notepad or any editor.
• Web page (.html). The same details, then the message with its formatting, headings, tables and links. It opens in any browser.
• PDF (.pdf). The web page as a PDF. The PDF is tagged, so its headings and tables come through to a screen reader.

The text, web page and PDF formats all start with the same details, in words rather than raw headers: subject, sender, reply-to address if it is different, recipients, date, the account and folder the message is in, whether it has been read, flagged, replied to or forwarded, and its attachments by name and size. Meeting invitations also list the meeting, its time and place, and the organizer.

Pictures. A saved web page, a PDF and a printout show the same pictures the reading pane does. Pictures included in the message are written into the file itself, unless Show pictures included in messages is off. Pictures from the web are included only if QuickMail already loaded them this session, with Load Pictures or the setting; saving never fetches one. Any picture left out shows its description in its place. Nothing in a saved web page runs or loads from the internet when you open it: its pictures are part of the file. The Original format keeps the message exactly as it was sent, pictures and all, and Text keeps descriptions only. See Pictures.

Where Save puts files. Save uses the format and folder set in Settings → General → Saving Messages. The default is Email message in your Documents folder. Each file is named from the subject, sender and date, for example Your order has shipped - Jane Smith - 2026-09-17 1432.eml. Save never replaces or duplicates a file without asking. If you have saved the message there before, Save opens the Save As dialog on that name, so you can pick another name or folder; choose the same name and Windows asks whether to replace it. If you save several messages and some were saved there before, QuickMail asks once: Yes replaces those copies, No keeps both and saves new copies beside them, and Cancel saves nothing. The status bar says what was saved and where.

Save As. For one message, Save As opens the standard Save dialog with the file name filled in. Choose a different format with Save as type. For several messages, the dialog’s title says how many. Choose a folder and a format, and each message is saved under its own name. Save As starts in the folder you used last time, and it does not change your default format or folder.

When the original is not available. An email message file has to come from your mail server. When QuickMail cannot reach the server, or the server no longer has the message, Save As does not write something else in its place. It says why and asks whether you want to choose another format. The text file, web page and PDF formats work offline for any message whose text is on this computer.

For POP3 accounts, QuickMail keeps the original of every message it downloads, so it can always save one. Messages downloaded before version 0.8.47 kept their original only if they had attachments. For others, QuickMail downloads the original again if it is still on the server. If it is not, the message can still be saved in the other formats.

Message Properties

Press Alt+Enter on any message to open a properties window showing sender, recipients, date, size, and flags.

Marking as Read

Press Ctrl+Q to mark the selected message or messages as read. Messages are also marked read automatically when you open them (configurable in Settings → General).

Deleting Messages

Press Delete. Deleted messages go to Trash. Press Ctrl+Shift+E to empty the Trash for the selected account.

Archiving Messages

Press Ctrl+Shift+M to archive the selected message — move it to your account’s Archive folder instead of deleting it. Use this for mail you want out of your inbox but want to keep. Delete is unchanged and still moves messages to Trash.

The command is named Move to Archive — it is on the message menu and the message context menu (Shift+F10), and in the command palette. Archiving works from every view. In the From, To, and Conversations groupings, archiving a group moves the whole group at once, the same way Delete does. The Ctrl+Shift+M shortcut can be changed in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Each account archives to its own folder — there is no single shared Archive folder. QuickMail uses the folder your provider marks as the Archive folder automatically, so most accounts need no setup. To choose a different folder, select a folder in the folder tree, open its context menu (Shift+F10), and choose Set as Archive Folder; choose Use Automatic Archive Folder to return to the automatic one.

Gmail has no dedicated Archive folder, so pick one for the account. The recommended choice is a label of your own: create a Gmail label named Archive, then select it in the folder tree and choose Set as Archive Folder. Archiving a message moves it out of the inbox and onto that label — which is what archiving means in Gmail — and it gives you a folder that holds only what you archived.

Setting [Gmail]/All Mail as the Archive folder also works and archives correctly, but that folder holds your entire mailbox, not just archived mail. Prefer a label unless you specifically want All Mail.

If an account has no Archive folder and you have not set one, QuickMail tells you rather than doing nothing.

All Archive in the folder tree gathers every account’s archived mail into one list, alongside All Inboxes, All Drafts, All Sent, and All Trash. It follows each account’s own archive setting — including a folder you chose with Set as Archive Folder — so it shows exactly the mail Move to Archive put there. Accounts with no Archive folder simply contribute nothing. This is the other reason to prefer a Gmail label over [Gmail]/All Mail: an account pointed at All Mail contributes its entire mailbox to All Archive, because for that account All Mail is the archive.

Tabs

QuickMail can open messages in tabs, keeping multiple messages visible at once.