Email sent but no documents appear
If you forwarded an email to your folder address and nothing has appeared, there are three possible reasons:
Stopped emails queue - the email was held for approval.
Forwarded file is a duplicate - it was stopped in import history
Wrong folder address - the email was forwarded to an incorrect address and never reached your folder.
Stopped Emails - What they are and how to approve them
The first email from any new sender is held in the Stopped emails queue until you approve it. This protects the folder from senders you did not expect. Once you approve the sender, all previously held emails from that address are released and any future emails go straight through.
👉 How do I know there are stopped emails?
There are a couple of ways to spot them. On the main Documents page, any folder with stopped emails will show an envelope icon. You can also click Stopped emails at the top of the folder list to filter and see only the affected folders.
Inside the folder itself, a Stopped emails button will appear in the upper right corner with a count of how many are waiting.
👉 How to approve a stopped email?
Open your folder and click the Stopped emails button. Click on an email to review what it contains. To approve several at once, select the emails first. Then choose one of the actions:
Process emails always - Add the sender to the whitelist and approve all emails from the same sender that were already stopped.
Process email once - Process the selected email this one time only. The sender is not added to the whitelist.
Delete - Delete the selected emails.
Allow spam - Process an email that was flagged as spam (see the next section).
👉 Can I approve senders upfront without waiting for them to email?
Yes. Go to Folder Menu > Folder Preferences and open the Email Import tab. Add individual addresses, or add an entire domain such as @datamolino.com to allow every sender from that domain.
👉 Do approvals apply across folders?
No. The whitelist is per folder. If you receive emails from the same sender into different folders, you need to approve them in each folder separately.
The email was marked as spam even though it was sent by an approved sender
Emails with a high spam score can still be stopped, even if the sender has been previously approved. This is triggered by the content of the email itself rather than the sender - common culprits are logos or links in the sender's or forwarder's email signature. Unfortunately, it's not possible to pinpoint exactly what is triggering the spam filter.
To release a spam-flagged email, open the Stopped emails queue, select the email, and use Allow spam to process it.
File duplicates
Another reason a forwarded email may seem to go missing is that the file has already been imported before. When that happens, the forwarded copy is stopped as a file duplicate and logged in Import History. For more on file duplicates, see this article [LINK-TODO: file duplicates]
Still can't find the email? Check the forwarding address.
First, check that you're forwarding to the intended folder. Then confirm that the folder address itself is correct - a common typo to watch out for is entering @dtmin.com instead of @dtmln.com - the two look similar but only the latter is correct.
The sender address looks invalid
Datamolino rejects an email immediately if the sender address does not contain an "@" symbol. This is rare in practice but can happen with malformed forwarding rules or automated mailers. If you suspect this is the cause, send a fresh email from a normal client (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and check whether it arrives.
An attachment was skipped
When an email arrives with several attachments, Datamolino keeps the most useful ones and skips the rest. The selection rules are:
Preferred attachments are PDFs, ZIPs, RARs, 7zs, and Office files (xls, xlsx, doc, docx). If any of these is in the email, other attachments may be skipped automatically.
Empty (0-byte) attachments are skipped silently. No upload is created and no error is shown.
Unsupported file types are skipped after upload. For example, CSV files are ignored and you are only charged for the processed PDF. No error is shown for the CSV.
Learn more about supported file types and document quality requirements.
How long Datamolino keeps emails
Retention rules differ depending on what state the email is in:
Stopped and spam emails: kept for up to 365 days, then automatically deleted if never approved.
Deleted emails: permanently purged after about 3 months in the deleted state.
Processed emails - those that resulted in documents - are kept with the documents themselves and are not on a separate timer.
For more information about where to view uploaded emails once released from stopped emails see [LINK-TODO: import history]