# Email Inbox: Send Documents In by Email

> Your account's dedicated Email Inbox address turns email attachments — images, PDFs, Word, and text files — into files in your account, and this page covers finding the address, the attachment limits, starting processing automatically with a bound template, restricting senders with a whitelist, and how password-protected PDFs are unlocked.

Every account has its own **Email Inbox** address. Forward an email to it — or give the address to a supplier or client — and its attachments land in your account as files, ready to process. The people sending to it do not need an account and never see your dashboard.

## Where to find your inbox address

The address is created for your account automatically. Open the dashboard and use either entry point:

- Open the **Add via** menu next to the upload button and choose **Email inbox**.
- In the upload panel, find the **Email Inbox** card under *Or receive via* and click **Settings**.

Both open the **Email Inbox** dialog. **Your Inbox Address** is shown there with a **Copy** button — it looks like `yourname-1a2b@inbox.imagetotable.ai`, built from your account's email prefix plus a short account code. The same dialog holds every setting described below.

Two controls govern the address itself:

- **Enable Inbox** — the master switch. Turn it off and mail sent to the address is not picked up.
- **Regenerate Address** — issues a new address. The old one stops working immediately, so anyone who had it needs the new one.

To send files in, either forward an email from your own mailbox to the address, or share the address directly with the person who has the documents. Attachments are collected in the background; nobody has to log in on the sending side.

## What attachments are accepted

Images, PDFs, Word documents, and plain text files are accepted. The older binary `.doc` format is not — open it in Word and save it as `.docx` first.

What an attachment counts as depends on its type. An image is a single file. A PDF is split into pages, and each page becomes its own [document](/docs/reference/glossary#document) (one file) — so a 10-page PDF arrives as 10 files in the same [batch](/docs/reference/glossary#batch), using 10 of that batch's slots rather than becoming 10 batches. Each of those files is then processed on its own and may yield one row of results or several, depending on what its page contains. A Word or text file is converted into pages first, and each of those pages is likewise one file.

| Attachment | Limit |
| --- | --- |
| Image (JPEG, PNG, WebP, and other common formats) | One image is one file. An image the server cannot decode is rejected. |
| PDF, including PDFs that open only with a password | Up to 1,000 pages and 50 MB per PDF |
| Word ( .docx ) | 50 pages per file after conversion |
| Plain text ( .txt ) | 50 pages per file after conversion |

All the attachments in a single email must also fit within your plan's batch capacity — the same per-batch maximum that applies to an upload from the dashboard. If the total goes over it, the email is refused with a note suggesting you split the files across several emails. See [Limits & Specs](/docs/reference/limits-and-specs#processing-capacity) for the per-batch numbers.

**Why email's PDF limit is higher.** The 1,000-page, 50 MB figure applies only to a PDF that was already a PDF when it arrived. A Word or text attachment is different: it has to be converted into pages before it can be processed, and that conversion is the slower step, so it keeps the standard **50 pages per file** conversion limit used everywhere else in the product. If an emailed Word or text file converts to more than 50 pages, it is refused with a note asking you to split it. See [Uploading Documents](/docs/guides/uploading-documents) for how the same limits apply to a normal upload.

By default the inbox reads only real attachments; an email with no attachment is refused with a note. Under **What to Process** in the dialog you can switch this to **Email Text** (only the email body is processed, and attachments are ignored even if present) or **Both** (the attachments and the body each become their own item).

## Processing incoming email automatically

By default, attachments that arrive by email wait in your Files list until you start processing, exactly like your own uploads. If you know in advance which columns you want, turn on **Auto-Process** in the Email Inbox dialog and choose a **Template**. Each incoming batch then starts on its own.

1. Switch on **Auto-Process**.
2. Choose a **Template**. This is the column set the attachments are read against — see [Templates & Columns](/docs/concepts/templates-and-columns) for how templates and their columns work.

A few things are worth knowing:

- **A template is required.** Automatic processing extracts a fixed set of columns, so without a selected template the app cannot know what to look for. Emails still arrive and queue, but nothing starts automatically; the dialog warns about this and the dashboard card is marked **Needs template**.
- **Arrivals are grouped, not processed one by one.** The app waits about ten seconds after the last file lands, so a set of attachments that comes in together is treated as one run.
- **Auto-processing uses [credits](/docs/reference/glossary#credits) like any other run.** Each file is charged at your account's rate when it is processed. If the account has no credits available, the files stay queued until there are.
- **Received files join the most recent Email Inbox batch** while it is still unprocessed and has room; once processing has started on that batch, or it fills up, the next arrival begins a new batch. See [Batches](/docs/concepts/batches) for how incoming batches are grouped and named.
- **If you delete the selected template,** the app clears the choice and asks you to pick a new one the next time you open the dialog.

## Restricting who can send to your inbox

The sender whitelist is optional and off by default. With it off, mail to your address is accepted from any sender (subject to the usual sender checks). Turn it on to accept only the addresses you list.

1. In the Email Inbox dialog, switch on **Security**.
2. Under **Approved senders**, add an entry and click **Add**. You can add either a full address, such as `vendor@example.com`, or a whole domain, such as `@example.com`, to approve every sender at that domain.

Once the switch is on, an email from an address that is not on the list is refused, and the sender receives an automatic reply saying their address is not on the approved list. The match is exact, so `@example.com` approves the whole domain while `billing@example.com` approves only that one address. Remove an entry with its **Remove** action when you no longer need it.

## Password-protected attachments

Encrypted PDFs — bank statements are the usual case — can be sent to the inbox without asking the sender to decrypt them first. You store the passwords once, and they are tried automatically.

1. In the Email Inbox dialog, find **PDF Passwords**.
2. Type the password into the **PDF password** field and click **Add**. You can store up to five.

When an encrypted PDF arrives, each stored password is tried against it, in the order you added them. As soon as one unlocks it, the PDF is processed normally, and its pages count against the limits above like any other PDF.

Stored passwords are shown only as a hint that ends in the last character, so you can tell entries apart without displaying the password itself. If none of the stored passwords unlocks a file, the file is not processed, and both you and the original sender receive an email explaining that a password is needed. Add the missing password to the list and ask the sender to send the email again.

## Common questions

### Does the person sending to my address need an account?

No. They only need the address (or to receive a forwarded email). They cannot see your files, batches, or results.

### What happens to the old address if I regenerate it?

It stops working immediately. Anything sent to it afterward is not picked up, so share the new address with anyone who was sending to the old one. Regenerating does not affect files you have already received.

### What if an email has no attachment?

With **What to Process** set to **Attachments** (the default), an email with no attachment is refused and the sender gets a note. If you would rather process the message text, switch **What to Process** to **Email Text** or **Both** in the dialog.

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Source: https://imagetotable.ai/docs/guides/email-inbox