Older emails not creating conversations when moved to support team inbox

[marco910]

Hi there,

My team has a mailbox, "support@domain.com". Sometimes, team members receive tickets in their personal mailbox, such as "john@domain.com". If that happens, we move them manually in Outlook over to the support mailbox.

Usually, HubSpot recognizes those moved mails and opens automatically a conversation for them in the HubSpot inbox so that we can answer them through HubSpot.

Today, I wanted to move over some mails that have been already in my mailbox for a few days. HubSpot does not recognize them and doesn't open a conversion. If I test this with a mail that I received a few minutes ago, it works fine.

It doesn't matter if the mail is marked as read or unread. New mails that are sent to "support@domain.com" are also automatically showing up in the HubSpot inbox. So the connection in working in general.

Are there any settings etc. that is blocking older mails from being created as conversation?

[marco910]

Hey @danmoyle 

Thanks for the tip! I will test that.

In the future, I will move the mails over earlier to avoid that issue. 

Thanks to all for your help!

[danmoyle]

You're welcome @marco910! 

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Hey there @marco910 and welcome to the Community. 

As a user (and HubSpot partner employee) I don't have deep knowledge on the exact answer, but here's what I found in my research. The issue you're experiencing with older emails not creating conversations when moved to the support team inbox in Outlook is likely due to HubSpot's handling of email timestamps. HubSpot typically processes recent emails for conversation creation, but older emails may not trigger this automatic process. I don't know the time cutoff, but HubSpot seems to prioritize recent emails for conversation creation. Emails that are a few days old may not be automatically recognized when moved.

As a workaround, you can manually forward the older emails to [Your Hub ID]@forward.hubspot.com. This should append the message to the contact record in the CRM and potentially create a conversation. It's a bit more manual than just moving them in bulk, but it should work. 

Since you're on Starter (I think I read that correctly), Support may not be an option, so you're in the right place. Hopefully if my ideas don't spark a solution, someone else can weigh in with one. 

[BérangèreL]

Hi @marco910 and welcome, we are so glad to have you here! ❤️

Thanks for asking the HubSpot Community!

I'd like to ask some clarifying questions please, to make sure that we help you the best we can:

1. Was this working before and this happened when you moved an inbox channel to help desk?
2. How do you move the emails from the personal Outlook inbox to the shared team inbox in HubSpot?
3. The conversation is not created only for those emails being transferred? If you transfer them, did you add the forwarding address to your email provider's settings?
4. What do you mean by conversation? The conversations inbox? Or a chat?
5. All emails transferred from today on work. Only emails received previously (before the move) don't open a conversation. Is that right?
6. Is this happening for all users? Or only some of the users?

The more info, screenshots (without sensitive/confidential information), and details you can provide, the better the Community can assist.

I'd like to share these resources that might be of interest:

- Set up the conversations inbox
- A guide to the conversations inbox

Also, I'd love to put you in touch with some of our Top Experts: Hi @danmoyle, @Mike_Eastwood and @HubSpot_Corey do you have suggestions to help @marco910, please?

Have a brilliant day and thanks so much!

Also, sending you my warmest and best wishes for 2025! 🎉

Best,
Bérangère

[marco910]

Hi @BérangèreL ,

Thanks for your reply! Of course also the best wishes to you for 2025 🙂

Let me give you some more details about this:

We have a shared mail address in Outlook "support@domain.com". This is also connected to HubSpot as channel for the Service Hub. Every team member has also a personal inbox like "john@domain.com".

When we move over mails to the shared mail address, we copy them from our personal inbox to the inbox of "support@domain.com". This worked well in the past.

Yesterday, I did a bit of testing.

When I send a test mail to my personal mail address and move it a few minutes after that over to the support inbox, HubSpot gets the mail as a conversation. But this does not work for mails which are older than a few days.

Mails which are forwarded or sent directly to the shared inbox, are recognized by HS without any issues. Sending mails works also fine.

1. We're on the "Starter" plan, so I think this is not available for us.

2. Just copying/dragging them from one inbox to the other in Outlook.

3. What do you mean exactly? I didn't do that in my test yesterday or in the past, but it worked fine always.

4. The conversation inbox in HS where new chats and messages from all channels are visible.

5. This happens only to mails which are a few days old (less than a week).

6. It happens for all users.

Hope this helps you to better understand the issue.

Marco