SLIM Companion Email Manager
SLIM Companion™ Email Manager boosts user productivity with a powerful set of features designed to streamline and simplify everyday workflows. For a quick overview, refer to the figure on the left or click here for a 1‑minute introduction.
Email Manager is a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) application that significantly enhances the standard email capabilities of SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019, SharePoint Server SE, and Microsoft Teams. It provides a seamless, integrated experience that elevates how users manage, view, and interact with emails across their Microsoft 365 environment.
For Small and Medium Enterprises, use the form below to order licenses for 10 to 500 users at EUR 23.22 per user per year. For Large Enterprises, please
request a quotation for a site-wide license.
€23,22
Supported Browsers: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari (only macOS and iPadOS)
Supported Applications: SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019, SharePoint Server SE, and Microsoft Teams
Supported Clients: Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS, and iPadOS
Request Access: Get access to our SharePoint Online demo environment
Non-Profit Organizations: Enjoy a 20% discount
Unique capabilities
Fast
Extract email metadata on the fly
View attachments directly in browser
Product features
See all features below
| Feature | SharePoint | Teams | Email Manager |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast email viewing directly in your browser | o | o | ✓ (fast) |
| View email attachments (docx, xlsx, pptx, pdf, jpg, msg, zip, ...) in your browser | x | x | ✓ |
| View emails belonging to the same thread, regardless of where they are stored within SharePoint | x | x | ✓ |
| On-the-fly extraction of email metadata (To, From, Subject, etc.) into SharePoint columns | x | x | ✓ |
| Identify, highlight and capture 'Privacy & Confidentiality' terms (e.g., SSN) in emails and email attachments | o (requires Purview) | o (requires Purview) | ✓ |
| Detect duplicate emails in SharePoint | x | x | ✓ |
| Make email attachments searchable (pdf, docx, pptx, zip, ...) | o (partial) | o (partial) | ✓ |
| Highlight search words in emails (and Office + pdf attachments) | x | x | ✓ |
| Attach SharePoint documents to new emails | x | x | ✓ |
| Include links to SharePoint documents in new emails | x | x | ✓ |
| Copy links to emails that open in the Email Manager preview | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
| Name emails based on email metadata (e.g., combine "Subject" with "Sent date") | x | x | ✓ |
| Show dates in the user's local time zone and date format | x | x | ✓ |
| Easy to deploy and support across many sites | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
Efficiently manage emails in SharePoint and Teams
Standard SharePoint / Teams
Before describing the features of SLIM Companion Email Manager, it’s important to understand the capabilities and limitations of SharePoint and Teams for managing emails.
Current Limitations:
- Storage: Emails are stored as regular documents in document libraries without email metadata, preventing users from sorting by sent date or grouping by conversation. File names are based on the email subject, with replies named sequentially (e.g., RE_subject (1).msg), leading to meaningless file names and the risk of overwriting emails with different content.
- Previewing: It takes several seconds to preview an email with the standard viewer. While attachment names are shown, they cannot be opened directly. Users must download the email to their computer and open it with an email client (e.g., Outlook) to access attachments. This is problematic for macOS, iPad, or computers without Outlook, and for organizations that prohibit downloading attachments due to sensitive content. The received date in the preview is shown in UTC, which can be confusing.
- Metadata extraction: SharePoint lacks built-in capabilities to automatically extract key metadata like sender, recipient, subject, and received date upon upload. This limitation often results in lost context and reduced searchability, as the files are treated as generic documents without parsed attributes, potentially complicating compliance and record-keeping workflows.
- Advanced Email Search Functionality: SharePoint’s search capabilities for emails are primarily full-text based, lacking a native, email-specific interface for tailored queries like those in Outlook. While it indexes metadata such as the subject line, allowing keyword searches within it, advanced filters (for instance, directly searching for “emails with attachments” or by specific recipients) are not supported out-of-the-box, requiring custom managed properties or external tools for mapping.
- Attachment Indexing: SharePoint Search indexes the email contents and attachment names of msg emails. The contents of the attachments is often not indexed. This limitation affects users and auditors, and can lead to non-compliance with privacy laws (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) and corporate policies.
- Attachment Handling: Attaching SharePoint or Teams documents to an email involves downloading the document, opening a new email in an email client, and attaching the downloaded document. This process is cumbersome, especially with multiple documents or folder structures.
- Common errors: Unlike standard SharePoint, Email Manager ensures a seamless preview experience by eliminating common errors such as ‘Can’t preview this file. Open the file or download it to view in your desktop app.’ Emails are rendered directly in the browser without requiring downloads or external applications.
- Language Support: Viewing emails with content in certain languages (e.g., Thai, Greek) sometimes fails in the standard SharePoint viewer.
- Viewing Email Threads: Viewing emails as part of a conversation thread is currently not supported. This limitation arises because emails are saved based on their subject lines, which often include prefixes like RE: and FW:. In addition, the email properties like Message-ID, References etc.. are not extracted. As a result, related emails are treated as separate emails rather than grouped conversations.
- SharePoint 2019 and Server SE: These versions lack the ability to upload emails from Outlook using drag and drop, and have no functionality for viewing emails or attachments in the browser.
Note: the upload limitation seems to be resolved by applying security updates KB5002754 and KB5002753 for SharePoint 2019 and security update KB5002768 for SharePoint Server SE. - Limitations with the identification of privacy information using Microsoft Purview: Identification of privacy information requires Microsoft 365 E5 (or equivalent) and has several limitations such as non-real-time detection, lack of highlighting, file format limitations, end users lack direct access to test or refine detections without admin privileges, limited functionality for on-premises SharePoint, …
- Detect duplicate emails: Without built‑in duplicate detection, identical emails can be saved multiple times across different locations within the tenant, leading to inconsistent data, reduced findability, and increased compliance risks.
- Inconsistent Storage Practices: Lack of standardized filing methods creates a “maze” of folders/subfolders, causing confusion, wasted time in storage and retrieval, and poor organization across teams.
- Excessive Manual Steps: High-click workflows (e.g., app-switching between Outlook and SharePoint) increase error risk, time consumption, and user resistance to adoption.
- URL Path Constraints: Long email subjects exceed 400-character URL limits.
In short, SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019, SharePoint Server SE, and Microsoft Teams offer very limited functionality for managing emails.
Spoiler Alert: Email Manager addresses most of these limitations.
Email Manager in-depth
Email Manager is a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) App that only needs to be installed once in your SharePoint environment. There’s no need to install any software on users’ computers, as it is fully browser-based. Your data remains secure because emails are processed directly in your browser, without the need for external systems or services. The tool is user-friendly, seamlessly extending the standard SharePoint interface by adding buttons to the document library ribbon and options to the context menu (…) of emails.
Email Manager buttons
Viewing Emails
Viewing emails is optimized for performance, typically taking less than 1 second. Accessing email attachments is also very fast because the data is already present in the browser’s memory. Users can directly view email attachments with common file formats such as pdf, jpg, png, gif, heic, etc., in the browser. A unique feature of the app is the ability to view Office attachments (docx, xlsx, etc.) in the browser. This ensures that documents with potentially sensitive content are not stored on local computers but remain securely in the cloud. Click here for a 1-minute overview.
Browsing through large sets of emails is optimized with previous/next buttons and the ability to use the keyboard’s left and right arrow keys. Additionally, users can navigate to a specific email by entering its number, making it easy to find and manage emails efficiently. The tagging icon (adjacent to the subject) allows for tagging of emails in the originating SharePoint page for further processing (e.g., archiving).
Presentation
The app can be used in “SharePoint Online” presentation mode, which mimics the standard SharePoint Online email preview. Key differences include displaying attachments as hyperlinks and showing the received date in the local time zone, improving accessibility and user experience.
The app can also be used in “Outlook” presentation mode, which mimics the Outlook client interface, providing a familiar and seamless experience for users.
Language Support
Emails are displayed as HTML and support a wide range of character encodings. Languages using Windows-1252 – commonly used across the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and much of Africa — as well as others such as Polish, Russian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Urdu, Thai, and Vietnamese, can be viewed directly in the browser.
View Emails with Attachments
Email Manager supports viewing email attachments directly within emails. Attachments within these emails can also be viewed in the browser without downloading any content. This feature allows users to efficiently complete their tasks while ensuring that security and compliance officers do not have to worry about sensitive content being downloaded to local computers.
Click here for a 1-minute overview.
View Files in Zip Attachments
This feature allows users to view files within a zip attachment directly in the browser, without the need to download and open the zip file. Supported file formats include docx, xlsx, pptx, pdf, msg, eml, jpg, png, gif, json, js, xml, heic, heif, tiff and dwg.
View files in zip attachments:
Upload Emails from Outlook
Classic Outlook supports drag-and-drop functionality, allowing users to move one or more emails directly into Outlook. When used with Email Manager, metadata from these emails is automatically extracted and populated into corresponding SharePoint columns.
New Outlook, however, does not support dragging emails into SharePoint. This limitation is due to a broader restriction in the new Outlook client, which currently does not allow drag-and-drop into web applications. As a result, users must first download the email(s) to their local device before manually uploading them to SharePoint. Email Manager will then automatically extract the email metadata.
Detect and Flag Duplicate Emails (optional)
Email Manager includes an optional feature that helps users detect duplicate emails during upload. Behind the scenes, it performs a search to check whether any existing emails in SharePoint share the same Message-ID. This approach ensures accurate detection of duplicates – even when the email’s name, size, location, or format differs. By comparing Message-IDs, Email Manager can reliably flag duplicates without relying on superficial attributes, helping maintain a clean and consistent SharePoint repository. Click here for a 1-minute overview.
Open SharePoint Emails in Outlook (optional)
The optional “Open in app” feature allows users to select one or more emails in SharePoint and open them using Outlook (or their default email client) without additional actions like “Keep” or “Save as.” This feature provides seamless integration between SharePoint and Outlook, similar to Word. It enables users to view SharePoint emails in their familiar email client and reply to them directly.
Note: This feature requires configuring the user’s browser to directly open the email from the approved SharePoint tenant. It is available only for Edge and Chrome. The email is first downloaded to the user’s download folder before it is automatically opened using Outlook.
Extract Email Metadata (optional)
Email Manager can automatically extract email metadata such as To, From, Subject, Conversation, Attachments details, Message-ID, References, etc., (26x fields) during uploading. End users can simply drag and drop emails from Outlook into SharePoint or use the SharePoint “Upload” button. This feature enables efficient viewing, sorting, filtering, and searching using email metadata. Additionally, it is possible to combine email metadata fields like “Subject” and “Sent date” to generate a unique email name. Click here for a 30-second overview.
The App supports SharePoint’s Default Column Value feature, allowing emails uploaded to specific folders or libraries to automatically inherit predefined metadata. This enables seamless, hands‑free classification of emails, such as assigning client IDs, project IDs, or case numbers—saving time and ensuring consistent labeling.
Note: Email Manager allows for extracting email metadata during uploading. It cannot be used for emails that are already present in SharePoint or Teams, such as those migrated from a legacy system. For extracting metadata from emails already in SharePoint use the BulkMetadataManager tool (link).
Highlighting Search Results
Search results are automatically highlighted in the Email Manager preview. Click here for a 30-second overview.
Indexing Email Attachments (optional)
SharePoint indexes the email text and the names of attachments, but it does not always index the contents of attachments (pdf, docx, xlsx, zip, …). See
link. This can create blind spots in the search index, affecting users because search requests may not return email attachments. It also impacts security and compliance officers who rely on search for investigations or audits. Using Purview does not resolve this issue, as Purview also uses SharePoint Search. Consequently, organizations may not comply with privacy and security legislation.
Email Manager offers an optional feature to address this issue, ensuring that attachments are included in the search index. The figure below shows the Email Manager preview after viewing an email in the search result list.
Matching search terms are highlighted in the email text and within attachments, enhancing visibility and search efficiency.
Note: This functionality is only available for emails uploaded to libraries where the Email Manager app is deployed. Indexing the attachments of existing emails in SharePoint requires the use of the BulkMetadataManager tool (link).
View Emails in the Same Thread (optional)
Email Manager offers an optional feature that allows you to view related emails grouped within the same conversation thread. This provides a clear and intuitive interface for navigating email chains. You can choose to sort emails by date or display them in a nested thread view. Additionally, the feature automatically flags duplicate emails stored in SharePoint. Click here for a 1-minute overview.
Identify, Highlight & Capture ‘Privacy & Confidentiality’ Terms (optional)
Email Manager automatically detects, highlights, and captures sensitive privacy and confidentiality information in emails and their attachments.
This intelligent feature identifies personal data such as Social Security Numbers, credit card numbers, IBANs, passport numbers, and many other sensitive terms — across emails as well as attachments (pdf, docx, xlsx, pptx, csv, zip, xml, and msg files).
Key Capabilities
- Real-time highlighting of sensitive terms directly in the email body and attachments.
- Multi-language support — works with multiple locales simultaneously (e.g., en-CA + fr-CA, or de-CH + fr-CH).
- Support for Office documents — terms inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments are highlighted when viewed as PDF (available in SharePoint Online).
Example (en-CA / fr-CA):
Example (nl-NL in PDF attachment):
How It Works
The feature uses powerful regular expressions combined with optional customizable CSV definition files. All processing happens locally in the user’s browser — no data is sent to external services, ensuring full privacy and compliance.
Ready-to-use definition sets are available for the following locales:
en-US, en-GB, en-CA, fr-CA, fr-CH, de-CH, de-DE, nl-NL
Additional locales can be added quickly upon request. You can easily customize or extend these sets (for example, add your company’s invoice number format as a sensitive term).
Business Value
All detected ‘Privacy & Confidentiality’ terms can be automatically captured into custom SharePoint columns. This enables powerful reporting, searching, filtering, and compliance auditing. Click here for a 1-minute overview.
Coming Soon
Future updates will allow you to:
Automatically apply Retention or Sensitivity Labels
Adjust permissions on emails containing sensitive data
Trigger Microsoft Power Automate workflows
Viewing PDF Attachments
PDF attachments can be directly viewed in the browser using different methods:
- Browser’s PDF Viewing Capabilities (default)
- Office Online: Opens the attachment in a separate browser tab
- Mozilla pdf.js: This method is very fast, allows for highlighting search words in the PDF attachment, and supports opening PDF attachments on a specific page.
Microsoft Teams
Teams currently does not support customizations of the Files tab (see link) and this has been classified as a bug.
Users need to click “Open in SharePoint” from the Files tab to access the full document library where the Email Manager extension is active.
Large Lists and Views
The Email Manager tool can handle document libraries that exceed the list view threshold and supports views, filters, and sort orders applied in the originating SharePoint page. Users can tag emails during viewing for further processing, such as moving the emails to a different location, setting properties, or downloading all selected emails.
Attach SharePoint documents to a new email (optional)
Attaching one or more SharePoint documents to a new email is a simple two-step process (click here for a 15-second overview):
1. Select one or more documents in SharePoint
2. Click “Mail item(s)”
This opens a new email with the selected documents attached.
To attach SharePoint files to an existing email in Outlook execute the above steps:
3. Select the attachments in the generated email (e.g., using CTRL)
4. Drag and drop the attachments to the existing email
5. Delete the downloaded email.
Note #1: selecting a folder will attach a zip file with the folder (plus contents) to the new email
Localization and Internationalization (optional)
Email Manager offers robust support for multiple languages through language packs. The following language packs are available: en-US, en-GB, fr-CH, da-DK, de-DE and nl-NL. Additional language packs can be made available on request. The following example shows Email Manager with a fr-CH language pack.
SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Server SE (Modern view)
Email Manager supports all features, including viewing emails, viewing attachments, extracting metadata, and mailing SharePoint documents, with SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Server SE. The app also allows users to drag and drop emails from Outlook to SharePoint 2019 or SharePoint Server SE. By clicking the “Upload email(s)” button, a drop area appears on the SharePoint page, enabling users to upload single or multiple emails.
Document Library Web Part (optional)
Email Manager can also enhance a document library web part by adding email management capabilities. In SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, a dedicated ribbon with Email Manager buttons is displayed, providing convenient access to email-related actions.
For SharePoint Online the buttons are shown within the document library web part.
Link to an Email Using Email Manager Preview (optional)
Email Manager allows users to copy a link that opens the email using the Email Manager preview, ensuring a consistent way to view emails. The links do not break permission inheritance.
Versioning
When an email is uploaded, a name conflict may occur if the email name, after optional renaming based on email metadata, already exists. Email Manager can be configured to automatically delete the uploaded email or display a dialog that allows the user to either add the email as a new version with a unique sequence number (e.g., (1)) or cancel the upload request.
Classic View
Email Manager extends the classic SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Server SE interface by enabling in-browser email preview functionality within document libraries. When a user hovers over an email, a preview pane appears on the right-hand side, displaying the email content. Attachments can be opened directly in the browser without requiring a download of the email. Additionally, the solution integrates a “View” option into the context menu for quick access.
The solution is deployed as a Windows SharePoint Solution Package (wsp) and is fully compatible with SharePoint farm environments. It supports deployment to subsites and is automatically available in all views.
Supported Environments
The current version of Email Manager can handle both msg and eml emails. The tool supports:
- The latest N-2 versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
- Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS, and iPadOS.
- Teams App (Windows 10/11 or macOS) or Teams web client.
- SharePoint Online (Office 365), SharePoint 2019, SharePoint Server SE, and Microsoft Teams.
Note: the functionality of the classic view on SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Server SE is currently limited to viewing emails and email attachments. It will be extended in future releases.
For Further Information
For further information, please check out the following sources:
In short: Email Manager is essential for efficiently managing emails in SharePoint.