How to add private notes to an email

Stick a note on any email, just for you. Find all your notes again in one place, and turn them into tasks.

Time needed
Less than a minute
What you need
Talanoa, and an email worth remembering something about

A sticky note on your email 📝

Sometimes you want to remember something about an email. “Call him back after the holidays.” “The price is negotiable.” “Ask Sarah first.”

With Talanoa, you can stick a little note on any email, like a sticky note on a letter. The best part: only you can see it. The sender never gets it, and it’s never sent to anyone.

Step 1: Add a note

  1. Open the email.
  2. Press N on your keyboard. Or hover over the message and click Add note.
  3. In the Add a note window, type your note.
  4. Click Save.

Your note now appears right under the message, with the time you wrote it.

A private note shown under a message in a conversation

To change or remove it later, hover over the note and use the small buttons that appear.

Step 2: Find all your notes

All your notes are gathered in one place:

  1. In your inbox, click the ≡ menu at the top left of your email list.
  2. Click Notes.

You can also press G then N from anywhere.

You see every note, with the email it belongs to. At the top, you can:

  • Search notes with the magnifying glass.
  • Use Filter to show notes by People, Date or Labels.
  • Use Sort to order them by People or by Date.

The Notes view listing private notes with their emails

Step 3: Do more with a note

On each note in the Notes view:

  • Click + label to tag it (“Sales”, “Follow-up”…).
  • Click the ⋮ menu, then:
    • Open email to go back to the email.
    • Convert Note into Todo to turn it into a task on your Todo board. Handy when “remember this” turns into “do this”. See Turn an email into a task.
    • Remove to delete it.

And… that’s it! 🎉 Your memory just got an upgrade.

Good to know

  • Notes about a person, not one email? Open their page and use the Notes box in the sender panel. See Your contacts & sender history.
  • Tasks have notes too: on a Todo card, click the little speech bubble to read or add notes.
  • Need a quick scratch space not tied to any email? Try the Scratchpad widget in Your Zen dashboard.
  • Prefer another key than N? Change it in Settings → Shortcuts (Add note).

Something went wrong?

“Talanoa says Please enter a note.” The note box is empty. Type something, then click Save.

“Pressing N doesn’t open anything.” Open an email first, and make sure you’re not typing in a reply box.

Still stuck? Write to us at [email protected]. A real human will answer.

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