The Documents view — Nixt Mail docs

The Documents view lists the files people have sent you, from every connected account, in one grid. It is built from your mailbox itself: nothing is uploaded anywhere, and no file is downloaded until you open it.

To open it, click Documents in the module rail, or choose View › Documents.

What you see

Part	What it shows
Documents	The title, with the number of files and their total size, such as 24 files · 18 MB.
Every file people have sent you, from the mailbox itself.	What the view is.
Search box	Search name, sender or subject.
New	A menu for starting a new file or opening one from this computer.
START SOMETHING	Cards for a new Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation, and Open a file.
RECENT	Files you opened from this computer recently. Shown once there are some.
Filters	Account and file-type filters. Shown when there is something to filter.
ALL DOCUMENTS or MATCHING DOCUMENTS	The grid of files, with a count.
How far back	A line under the grid saying how much of your mail was read. See How far back Documents looks.

If no account is connected, the view says No account is connected, so there are no files to list yet.

The file cards

Each card shows:

a badge for the kind of file — PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, IMG, ZIP, AUD, VID, or the file’s extension,
the account it arrived in, when more than one account is connected,
the file’s size, when the message says,
the file name,
how long ago it arrived and who sent it, such as 3d ago · Alex Morgan,
the subject of the message it came with.

Files are listed newest first.

What is left out

To keep the grid to files people meant to send, Nixt Mail leaves out:

inline pictures with generated names, such as image001.png,
pictures smaller than 24 KB, such as signature logos,
calendar invitations (.ics and .vcs), which appear in Calendar instead.

The same file forwarded around a conversation is listed once — the earliest copy. Files count as the same when they have the same name, the same size and the same sender, so invoice.pdf from two different people is listed twice.

Open a file

Click a card. Nixt Mail fetches the file from the message it came with and opens it in the matching editor. A small spinner shows on the card while it loads.

Documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs open in Nixt Mail. See Attachments and documents.
For a file Nixt Mail has no editor for, open the message it came with to save the file.

Files opened from the Documents view show From sender in the editor’s title bar, and offer More › Reply with this file… to send the edited copy back. Save asks where to put the file, because it has not been saved to this computer yet.

If a file cannot be opened, a message says why:

Message	What it means	What to do
file name is too large to open here (size).	The file is over 100 MB.	Get it from your provider’s web mail.
file name is larger than it claimed (size) and was not opened.	The file turned out to be over 100 MB.	As above.
That account is not connected. Reconnect it and try again.	The account the file came from is offline or signed out.	Reconnect the account.
The message this file came from is no longer in the mailbox.	The message was deleted or moved out of the part of the mailbox Documents reads.	Find the message in Mail.
file name couldn’t be read from the server.	The server did not return the file.	Try again.
file name couldn’t be opened. Check your connection and try again.	Something else went wrong.	Check your connection.

Search and filter

Search: type in Search name, sender or subject. The grid shows files whose name, sender’s name, sender’s address or message subject contains what you typed, and the heading changes to MATCHING DOCUMENTS. Press Esc, or click the ✕ (Clear search), to clear it.
Account: with more than one account connected, choose All accounts or one account.
File type: choose All files or one badge, such as PDF. Types are listed most common first.

Filters and search combine. When nothing matches, the grid says Nothing matches that.

Start a new file

Use either:

one of the START SOMETHING cards — Document (Letters, memos and reports), Spreadsheet (Numbers, formulas and tables) or Presentation (Slides, notes and a full-screen show), or
New, then Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation.

A blank file opens in its editor, named Untitled document.docx, Untitled spreadsheet.xlsx or Untitled presentation.pptx, with Not saved yet in the title bar. A new presentation starts with one slide. Save asks where to put it.

Open a file from this computer

Click the Open a file card (From this computer), or New › Open a file….
In the Open a document picker, choose a file and click Open.

The file opens in its editor. Save writes back to the same file. If the file cannot be written to, it opens read-only, with a lock in the title bar.

If Nixt Mail has no editor for the file, a Cannot open file name dialog gives the reason and a suggestion. See Files in other formats.

Recent files

Files you open from this computer are listed under RECENT, newest first, up to 12.

Click a file to open it again.
Click the ✕ on a file to forget it.
Click Clear to empty the list.

Files that no longer exist are left off the list. If a file was moved since, opening it says That file is no longer where it was. and removes it from the list.

Opening a file from a message or from the grid does not add it to RECENT. Saving it to a file on this computer does.

How far back Documents looks

Documents, Calendar invitations and Team are all built from the most recent messages in each mailbox. A line under the grid says how far back that is:

Line	What it means
The last N of M messages.	Only the most recent N messages were read. Look further back is shown beside it.
The last N of M messages, which is as far back as Nixt Mail will look.	The limit of 25,000 messages is reached.
Every message in your mail has been read — N of them.	The whole mailbox was read.

Nixt Mail reads the last 1,000 messages at first. Each click on Look further back reads five times as many, up to 25,000. Only the structure of each message — who sent it, when, its subject and its list of files — is read; no attachment is downloaded to build the grid.

Changing how far back to look changes Calendar and Team as well.

When the grid is empty

Message	What it means
Reading your mailbox…	The files are still being listed.
Nothing matches that.	Your search or filter found nothing.
Nixt Mail could not read the mailbox, so this is not empty — it is unknown.	Reading the mailbox failed. The reason follows. Check the account’s connection.
Connect an account and the files people have sent you appear here.	No account is connected.
No attachments in the mail Nixt Mail has read.	There are no files in the messages read so far. Try Look further back.