Welcome to the Community @GabrielleJL! Fellow HubSpot user here and consultant, not a HubSpot employee. So I can’t see into your portal. But here’s my (hopefully helpful) thoughts on what’s most likely happening. Your personal Gmail test is expected to fail unless that Gmail address is authorized in HubSpot. For a forwarded email to log, the address that sends the forwarded wrapper must be:
- The email address on a HubSpot user account,
- A personally connected inbox for that user, or
- A permitted alias configured in the connected inbox or the user’s profile/preferences.
So, having access to the Gmail account is not enough. If it is not your HubSpot user email, a connected personal inbox, or a configured alias, HubSpot will not use it to log forwarded messages.
For the three Outlook messages, the key question is not whether the original contacts/companies are new—the forwarding feature can create a new contact from the original sender if eligible—but whether the actual Outlook From address used for the forwarded email is an exact HubSpot-recognized sender and whether HubSpot can parse the forwarded-message format.
Here’s what I’d check out in order.
Confirm the Outlook sending address
- In HubSpot, check the email address on your user profile.
- Confirm the Outlook message was sent from that exact address, not from a shared mailbox, delegated mailbox, distribution list, or an unconfigured alias.
- If you send as an alias, add it under your HubSpot profile/preferences or ensure it is configured as an alias in the connected inbox.
Make a clean, manual forward
- Open one original message in Outlook.
- Click Forward—do not use an Outlook mail-flow rule, automatic redirect, “forward as attachment,” or a copied/pasted email body.
- Send only the individual message/reply, not an entire conversation chain.
- Leave Outlook’s generated forwarding block and header intact, including the visible forwarded-message separator and From / Sent / To / Subject details. HubSpot requires a forwarded-message header and has no universal parser for every client-generated format.
Check your Never Log settings
- In HubSpot, review the Never Log list for the three recipient email addresses and their domains.
- A contact/domain on that list is excluded even when the email is sent to HubSpot’s BCC or forwarding address.
Verify the address itself
- Re-copy the forwarding address from Settings → Data Management → Objects → Activities → Email Log & Track → Manual Logging.
- Do not rely on a previously saved recipient/autocomplete entry; the current address should be copied exactly from the portal. HubSpot’s documented forwarding address is specifically meant for logging received messages after the fact.
Check privacy and content requirements
- If GDPR privacy settings are enabled, confirm your account has a legal basis to communicate with the recipients.
- Verify the forwarded message contains both HTML and plain-text content.
- Verify the original message is in a HubSpot-supported language.
- Confirm your email server permits external forwarding.
Here’s an important nuance about record association I was reminded of when researching this for you. The absence of activity on the three newly created company records does not necessarily prove nothing logged. Forwarded email logging is contact-centered: HubSpot logs the forwarded message to the relevant contact. So if the original sender is not already a CRM contact, it can create one, provided that sender/domain is not on Never Log. Company association then depends on the contact’s company/domain association setup.
After testing, search Contacts globally for the original sender’s email address and inspect the timeline there, not only the newly created company record.
Hopefully that helps. I’d definitely reach out to Support if you’re on a paid plan. If not, maybe someone in the Community would be willing to get on a call and troubleshoot with you.
Moderator note: While this solution may not address the original poster’s specific situation, it could be helpful for other community members facing similar challenges.
