Managing Contacts and Groups in Webmail

TrekMail webmail includes a built-in address book where you can store names, email addresses, and other details for the people you write to regularly. Contacts make composing faster, keep your address book organized, and sync across your TrekMail account.

Opening the Contacts tab

Click Contacts in the top navigation bar. This opens the full contacts view with your contact list on the left and the detail panel on the right.

Adding a contact

1. Click New contact in the contacts panel
2. Fill in the details:
   • First name and Last name
   • Email address (you can add more than one per contact)
   • Phone (optional)
   • Company (optional)
   • Notes (any additional information you want to keep)
3. Click Save

The contact is saved immediately and will appear in compose autocomplete next time you start typing their name or email.

Adding multiple email addresses to one contact

A single contact can have several email addresses — for example, a colleague might have a work address and a personal one. To add more than one:

1. Open or create a contact
2. Click Add another email below the email field
3. Enter the additional address and assign it a label (Work, Home, Other)
4. Save

When you type their name in the compose To field, all their saved addresses appear in the dropdown and you can pick the right one.

Editing a contact

1. Click a contact in the list to open their details
2. Click Edit (pencil icon) in the top right of the detail panel
3. Make your changes
4. Click Save

Deleting a contact

1. Open the contact
2. Click More options (⋮) → Delete
3. Confirm the deletion

Deleting a contact removes them from your address book but does not affect any emails you have already sent or received.

Contact groups

Groups let you organize contacts into named collections — for example, "Team," "Clients," or "Newsletter." You can then address an email to an entire group by typing the group name in the To field.

Creating a group:

1. Click New group in the left panel
2. Give the group a name
3. Click Save

Adding contacts to a group:

1. Open the group
2. Click Add members
3. Search for and select contacts from your address book
4. Click Done

Sending email to a group: In the compose window, type the group name in the To field. The group appears in the autocomplete dropdown — select it and the To field expands with every member's address.

Tip: You can also add or remove individual contacts from a group later. Open the group, hover over a member, and click the remove icon (×) next to their name.

Importing contacts

If you already have contacts in another email client or app, you can bring them into TrekMail in bulk by importing a file.

Supported formats:

• VCF (vCard) — the standard contact format used by Gmail, Outlook, Apple Contacts, and most phone address books. Carries all the fields cleanly.
• CSV — a spreadsheet format with one contact per row. Best when you've cleaned data in Excel/Sheets first.

CSV column expectations

TrekMail's CSV import recognises the following column headers (case-insensitive):

Other columns are ignored. The CSV must have a header row. Empty cells are stored as null — they don't cause import failures.

If your CSV exports use different headers (e.g., Gmail exports have many specific columns), TrekMail recognises the most common synonyms automatically. If a column you care about isn't mapped, rename it in Excel before importing.

Importing flow

1. Click Import in the contacts toolbar.
2. Choose your file type (VCF or CSV).
3. Select the file from your computer.
4. Review the preview — TrekMail shows you how many contacts it found, lists the first few entries so you can spot column-mapping issues, and highlights any rows that failed validation (bad email format, etc.).
5. Click Import to confirm.

The import runs immediately for small files (under ~500 contacts) and in the background for larger ones. The contacts list refreshes as the import completes.

Tip: To export from Gmail, go to contacts.google.com → Export → Google CSV or vCard. For Outlook, go to People → Manage → Export contacts → Comma Separated Values. For Apple Contacts: File → Export → vCard.

Handling duplicates

If an imported email address already exists in your contacts, TrekMail skips that entry to avoid creating duplicates. The import summary shows how many were skipped vs newly added. There's no "merge" workflow currently — if you want to update an existing contact, edit it manually or delete and re-import.

Per-mailbox isolation

Imported contacts go into your mailbox's address book only. They're not shared with other mailboxes on your TrekMail account. If your team needs a shared contact list, every mailbox imports the same file separately (or you use the CalDAV/CardDAV path from below to keep a central list in another tool).

Exporting contacts

To back up your contacts or move them to another app:

1. Click Export in the contacts toolbar
2. Choose VCF (recommended for address books) or CSV (recommended for spreadsheets)
3. Your browser downloads the file

You can import this file into Gmail, Outlook, Apple Contacts, or any other standard address book application.

Autocomplete in compose

When you type in the To, CC, or BCC fields of a compose window, TrekMail searches your contacts after the second character and shows matching results. The dropdown shows the contact's name and email address.

Use the arrow keys to move through suggestions and press Enter to select one. Press Tab to accept the highlighted suggestion and move to the next field.

The dropdown prioritises:

1. Saved contacts in your address book — these always sit at the top.
2. Contact groups matching the typed query — selecting a group expands into every member's address.
3. Recent recipients TrekMail has seen you email — addresses you've sent to before that aren't yet in your address book.

The third category fades naturally if you stop emailing those addresses. To pin them, add them to your address book.

Common questions

Is there a limit on how many contacts I can store? Practical limit is a few thousand per mailbox. Most users have a few hundred. If you're importing tens of thousands of contacts, consider whether you really need an address book of that size or if a CRM is a better fit — the autocomplete UX degrades when you have hundreds of partial-match results.

Why doesn't a contact show up in autocomplete when I know they're saved? A few possibilities:

• You typed only one character — autocomplete starts at the second.
• The match is for a less-common field (birthday, notes). Autocomplete searches name, email, and company — not everything.
• The contact's email was saved with leading/trailing whitespace from the import. Open the contact and re-save.

Can I share a contact list across mailboxes in my account? Not natively today. Two workarounds:

• Each mailbox imports the same VCF/CSV separately (one-time, periodic refresh).
• Keep the master list in an external tool that supports CardDAV (e.g., a Google Contacts account everyone has access to) and connect every mailbox to that, instead of using TrekMail's own address book.

Can other mailbox users see my contacts? No. Webmail address books are scoped to your mailbox only. The account owner can see the mailbox exists but cannot see your contact list.

What happens to contacts when I delete my mailbox? They're deleted with the mailbox. Export to VCF or CSV before deletion if you want a backup. See Deleting a Mailbox.

Can I attach a photo to a contact? Not in the current UI. CardDAV-imported contacts that have photo data (vCard PHOTO field) sync the photo data through to clients that support it (Apple Contacts, etc.), but TrekMail webmail doesn't render the photo in its own contact view today.

Sync with phone, desktop, and other apps

Your TrekMail address book is exposed over CardDAV — the same open standard your phone uses for iCloud or Google Contacts. Connect once and your TrekMail contacts appear in the native Contacts app on macOS, iOS, Android, and Thunderbird, with two-way sync.

The settings are the same in every client: server trekmail.net, your full TrekMail email as the username, and your mailbox password.