Gmail Help & Support

How to Get Started with Gmail on Zapier

About Gmail's Integration#

• Admin/owner permissions - In order to send emails from another email address, you need to have proper alias permissions set up under Accounts tab. See our doc here on how to do that.
• Paid/versioned account - Any user with business Gmail can use this integration with any other app on the platform. If you are a free consumer user, there are some limitations. See our guide here for more details about what you can or cannot connect to.

Connecting with Gmail#

To get started with Gmail, first click to add a Gmail account in your Zap.

You should then get a pop-up window from Gmail asking you to log-in to authorize the connection between that Gmail account and Zapier. If you are already logged in the pop up will show right away.

After logging in, you'll get sent back to your zap where you now have your Gmail account connected!

You can click the Test button to make sure it is working correctly!

Popular Things To Do With Gmail

Common Problems with Gmail

My Gmail Zap has an error about connecting to Google-approved or not-approved apps#

Starting May 26, 2019, users with a consumer Gmail account - which end in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com - will have limitations on which apps they can send Gmail information to, in compliance with Google's new security protocols. These accounts look like this in your Gmail dashboard:

Business Gmail accounts—which have a custom domain on their email address like @mywebsite.com —can still use the Gmail integration with any app on Zapier without limitations. These accounts look like this in your Gmail dashboard (note the yellow banner):

If you have a consumer Gmail account connected in your Zaps that is sending information to other apps, starting on May 26, 2019 you should be able to send information to only these currently Google-approved apps. This list is a work in progress and we're working with Google to grow it:

• Any built-in Zapier tool (like Weather or Code by Zapier, except for SMS/Phone by Zapier)
• Any Google app (like Google Sheets or Google Docs)
• Bombbomb (with re-authorization)
• Close.io (with re-authorization) (with re-authorization)
• Dropbox (with re-authorization)
• Evernote (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Dynamics (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Excel (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Exchange (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Office 365 (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Teams (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft To-Do (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft OneNote (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Outlook (with re-authorization)
• Microsoft Yammer (with re-authorization)
• OneDrive (with re-authorization)
• Pipedrive (with re-authorization)
• Streak (with re-authorization)
• Todoist (with re-authorization)

If you're creating a Zap with your consumer Gmail account and try to turn it on, we'll automatically let you know if you are trying to send data to an approved app, and ask for re-authorization for each new approved app. You'll have until June 26, 2019 to authorize your consumer Gmail account with each approved app from the list above. If a Zap connecting your consumer Gmail to an approved app is not re-authorized by June 26, 2019, you'll receive errors about not being able to connect before those Zaps are automatically turned off. This will preserve your Zap setup, but your Zap will not be running until you've reauthorized to a Google-approved app.

We will also let you know if you are trying to send consumer Gmail account data to a non-approved app, which will not be allowed after May 26, 2019. Any Zaps that send consumer Gmail account data to a non-approved app will also receive errors about not being able to connect before those Zaps are automatically turned off. You can also inspect your affected Zaps and Accounts by clicking the below button:

View Affected Zaps and Accounts

If you're using an app that you'd like to be approved to connect with consumer Gmail accounts on Zapier, let our support team know through the contact form. Although we cannot guarantee at this time that an app will get approved by Google, we're happy to hear your request.

To keep your current Gmail and app integrations intact, another course of action is to begin using a business Gmail account with Zapier. You can do this by either forwarding emails to such an account or opening a G Suite account for your business. Doing so gives you access to all apps on Zapier.

I'm getting a (400) Bad Request and said "Invalid to header" error message#

This error is referring to the To: field when you send out an email:

If this error pops out, it means there's an issue with the email you're passing over to Gmail. Gmail is expecting only an email address here. For example: example@zapier.com

Make sure that the mapped field is only sending an email address without any extra details to Gmail:

Also make sure that there's data from the trigger app field:

If you need to send the email to multiple people, add each email to a separate line:

I have multiple files on my email but the Zap is giving me a Zip file combining all the files.#

If you're using one of the new email-type Gmail triggers and find that all of the attachments on those e-mails are being zipped use the Gmail "New Attachment" trigger instead. This trigger runs once for every attachment on an email.

How do I use the Filter step correctly with the New Attachment trigger?#

"New Attachment" triggers once per attachment, and gives information specific to the attachment we found when we polled. If there are multiple attachments on an email, though, each trigger also returns fields that deal with all attachments:

If you are trying to filter on the attributes of a single attachment coming from this trigger, you will want to be sure you are choosing the attachment-specific fields when configuring the Filter. The specific entry is the following:

Example:

How can I attach a file to my email that's not in my trigger?#

If you have a fixed file you want to always attach to your email using the send email action, you just need to upload the file somewhere publicly first like Dropbox.

One thing to note here is that the file needs to be downloadable.

For example: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5gw98mg8pmjxpv5/Zapier%20test%20PDF%20file.pdf?dl=0

If you click on the above link, notice how the pdf file directly downloads into your computer? This is the type of link that the attachment field needs in order to get those files attached.

To get a link like this, I suggest using Dropbox. Below is a tip on how to make a Dropbox file downloadable.

When you upload a file to Dropbox, it would give you a shareable link that starts with "https://www.dropbox.com/". What we'll need to do here is to replace "https://www.dropbox.com/" in your link with "http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com" Once you've done that, you can then copy/paste that link to the attachment field of your Action template.

So a link like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5gw98mg8pmjxpv5/Zapier%20test%20PDF%20file.pdf?dl=0

Would become this: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5gw98mg8pmjxpv5/Zapier%20test%20PDF%20file.pdf?dl=0

Once you get the downloadable link, you can then copy-paste that to your Gmail action step and the file should be attached properly.

Not all my emails are triggering my Zap#

Each Gmail trigger has a specific length of time in the past that it can "see" emails in your Gmail account. If the email in question is older than the time limit, the trigger won't be able to detect that email.

For example, for New Labeled Email, if an email is from 3 days ago, even if you add the trigger label today, it will not trigger the Zap.

These limits are as follows:

• New Labeled Email - 2 days
• New Starred Email - 2 days
• New Email - 1 hour
• New Email Matching Search - 1 hour
• New Thread - 1 hour
• New Attachment - 1 hour

My Zap Triggers Every Time Someone Replies to an Email#

The "new email" trigger will trigger for each new email regardless of threading. If you only want to trigger once for the entire thread, switch to the "new thread" trigger.

Some of my emails aren't showing up on the "New Labeled Email" Trigger#

The New Labeled Email Trigger will only fetch emails that entered your inbox within the last two days and were then labelled, so if the emails are older than that we will not be able to see them.

Additionally, we will only fetch the last 100 labeled emails within that timeframe, so if you have more than 100 labeled emails, some of them won't show up. One option would be to set up an autoforwarding rule in Gmail to send any emails with those specified labels to Email by Zapier and then trigger off "New Inbound Email" instead.

Unable to trigger off star color when using "New Email Matching Search" Trigger#

If using more than one star color, you can rely on the "New Email Matching Search" Trigger rather than the "New Starred Email" Trigger in order to trigger on specific star colors. When doing so, use the following for your search string (specifically what comes after the colon)

• Yellow star: l:^ss_sy)
• Blue star: l:^ss_sb
• Red star: l:^ss_sr
• Orange star: l:^ss_so
• Green-star: l:^ss_sg
• Purple star: l:^ss_sp
• Red bang: l:^ss_cr
• Yellow bang: l:^ss_cy
• Blue-info: l:^ss_cb
• Orange guillemet: l:^ss_co
• Green check: l:^ss_cg
• Purple question: l:^ss_cp

Source

How can I style the emails I send?#

You can use HTML to style your emails. Be sure to set the "Body Type" field to HTML. You can find some tips for styling emails here

Can I get HTML Messages in a Gmail Trigger?#

Yes! Gmail triggers have a field for HTML message body as well as a field for plain text message body.

Can I send HTML Messages from Gmail in a Zap?#

Yes, be sure to set the "Body Type" field to HTML. However, if you are going to be doing marketing/sales via email, we generally recommend you use a dedicated email service rather than a Gmail Zap.

My Gmail Account Can't Send Emails Anymore#

Gmail has a sending limit of 500 emails per day to prevent abuse. Gmail will also stop allowing you to send email if enough spam complaints are triggered based on the email you send.

If you are sending automated, transactional emails of any volume, we highly suggest you switch to a dedicated transactional email provider like Mandrill, Mailgun, or Sendgrid.

Logged into the wrong Gmail account#

Does your Zap appear to be logged into the wrong Gmail account? When you connect your Gmail account, your browser may already be logged into the wrong Gmail account. Make sure when you connect you choose the correct Gmail account to authorise from the popup like this:

If you are connected to the wrong account, you can try reconnecting to the right account in a new browser on your Conencted Accounts area here.

Too many simultaneous connections#

Gmail currently has a limit of 15 simultaneous connections per account. This effectively means only 15 Gmail trigger Zaps can be used at once assuming no other service is accessing Gmail on your behalf. This is a restriction from Gmail's API documented here. There are no known work arounds except some good old fashioned creativity! If you come up with something awesome, let us know.

To audit what other apps or services might be connecting to your Gmail account and remove any of them that may be unnecessary, check out this link

Gmail failed command: SELECT => socket error: EOF#

This error can occur if you use a 3rd party email client to download/view your Gmail emails, as Gmail has bandwidth limits per hour and day that could be exceeded. More info on that front here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/1071518?hl=en&ref_topic=6013516

Gmail failed: command SEARCH illegal in state AUTH, only allowed in states SELECTED#

This happens when you've selected an invalid Mailbox on your Trigger options. You can't use advanced values when selecting a Mailbox. Make sure to choose an existing Mailbox from the dropdown. If you want to create a new Mailbox to use with Zapier, do that inside Gmail and then come back to Zapier to setup your Zap.

I'm getting a DjangoUnicodeDecodeError or LookupError unknown encoding - AKA Unsupported or Non-Standard Characters#

If you ever get this error or one mentioning unsupported or non-standard characters, this is due to Gmail and more specifically IMAP having poor support for non C0 unicode characters. This can also crop up with large attachments. Potential solutions include:

• Switch to using the Inbound Email triggers. This requires you to setup auto-forwarding for your Gmail account to your Zapier given inbound email address.
• Switch your Zap to use the IMAP trigger.

If neither of those work there is still one other option: help us improve Gmail triggers/actions. To do that follow these directions:

• Find the offending email address.
• Click the small dropdown in the email and select show original (see below).
• Copy and paste the entire email into a text file.
• Send us a support email and include the text file created in step 3.

Can I send CSS styling when sending Gmail via Zapier?#

Gmail supports CSS using <style> blocks as well as inline styling. You can see more information on the kinds of styling Gmail supports here.

I'm trying to use the Send Email action to use an alias email, but I'm not seeing it in the dropdown#

Whilst Google Suite admin may have set up aliases this may not have been formally added to Gmail itself. To do that, you need to follow the steps under heading 1 here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en. In order to be able to use their aliases, they should show up in the Accounts tab here:

If they're not showing up, you may need to add them via that menu; you should then show up in the From dropdown in the Send Email action