CodaMail - CodaMail Notebook

📕 What CodaMail Notebook Is

CodaMail Notebook is a place to keep long-form writing in your CodaMail account. You organize notes into notebooks, which can be nested as deeply as you like, and you can tag notes, turn them into to-dos with due dates, attach files and images, and link notes to each other. Notes are written in Markdown, so headings, lists, tables, code, footnotes, mathematics, and diagrams all render as you would expect.

The feature everything else rests on is end-to-end encryption. When you turn it on, your notes are encrypted inside your browser using a master password that never leaves your device. We never receive that password and we never hold the keys, which means the contents of your notes, their titles, your notebook names, your tags, and your attachments are all unreadable to us. This is not a promise about what we choose to look at. It is a description of what we are able to look at, which is nothing.

Notebook works entirely on its own. You never have to install anything, and many people use it only through webmail. It also speaks the same open sync format as the Joplin app, so if you prefer a desktop or phone app, you can point Joplin at your CodaMail account and work from either side. Encryption still happens on your devices in that arrangement, and we still see nothing.

🌐 Available in All Languages: CodaMail Notebook is fully localized in 88 languages, and follows the language you choose for webmail.

Notebook is separate from Notes, the simpler note pad built into webmail. Notes is good for quick jottings and syncs with plain-file apps like Obsidian. Notebook is the heavier tool, for people who want notebooks, revisions, to-dos, and encryption. You can use both.

🧭 Getting Started

Open Notebook from the icon in the webmail sidebar, below Notes. The first time you visit, you will be invited to Start a notebook set.

Already using the Joplin app somewhere else? Stop here and do not create a notebook. If you have notes on Dropbox, Joplin Cloud, another WebDAV server, or a folder on your disk, you bring them over by pointing the app at CodaMail and letting it upload them. Creating a notebook set here first leaves a single collection guarded by two master passwords, where one would have done. Go straight to Moving an Existing Joplin Setup to CodaMail instead.

Otherwise, to start fresh:

Click Create notebooks.
Name your first notebook. The default is Notes, and you can rename it or add more later.
Decide about encryption using the Encrypt these notes end to end checkbox. It is on by default, and we recommend leaving it on.
If you keep encryption on, choose a master password and confirm it. It must be at least 8 characters.
Click Create notebooks to finish.

Your master password cannot be reset. It is not your account password, and it is never sent to us. Because your notes are encrypted with a key derived from it on your own device, nobody can recover your notes if you forget it, including us. Choose something you will not lose, and consider storing it in a password manager. If you do lose it, your only option is to delete the notes and start over, which is described in the encryption section below.

You can also start from the other direction, even with no notes to bring: install the Joplin app first, point it at your CodaMail account, and let it create everything. See the syncing section for that route.

🗺 Finding Your Way Around

The screen is divided into three parts:

Notebooks on the left, showing your notebook tree, plus the special views All notes, Tags, Trash, and, when relevant, Conflicts.
The note list in the middle, showing the notes in whatever you have selected, with a search box above it.
The note on the right, where you read and edit.

All notes shows everything in every notebook at once, which is useful when you are not sure where something lives. Selecting a notebook narrows the list to that notebook. Selecting a tag shows every note carrying it, wherever it lives.

On narrow screens and phones the three panes stack, and you move between them by tapping. The layout follows the same interface density and color scheme settings as the rest of webmail.

✍ Writing Notes

Click New note above the note list to create one in the currently selected notebook. Give it a title, write the body, and click Save. Cancel discards your changes and leaves the stored note untouched.

Notes are written in Markdown. You type plain text with light punctuation for formatting, and it renders when you save. The editor has a toolbar for the common marks (bold, italic, headings, lists, links, code) plus two buttons specific to Notebook: one inserts a mathematics block, and one inserts a working diagram block you can edit. The full list of what renders is in the Markdown reference below.

Notes created in the Joplin app from a web clipping may be stored as HTML rather than Markdown. Those display correctly here, and the Details panel tells you which format a note uses.

If the same note was changed somewhere else while you had it open, saving will tell you so rather than overwrite the other change. Reopen the note to get the current text, then make your edit again. Nothing you typed is thrown away without telling you.

Two editor preferences are in Settings: the Editor font size, and a Maximum note width that keeps long lines readable on wide screens. Setting the width to zero uses the whole pane.

📁 Notebooks

Notebooks hold your notes and can contain other notebooks, so you can build a tree as shallow or as deep as suits you. Use the Notebook actions menu, or right-click a notebook in the sidebar, to reach these:

New notebook creates one, and the Inside field chooses its parent. Choosing Top level makes it a root notebook.
Rename notebook changes its name.
Move notebook re-parents it, along with everything inside it.
Delete notebook moves the notebook and all of its notes and sub-notebooks to the Trash.

Deleting a notebook never destroys anything immediately. Everything inside goes to the Trash together and can be restored. You are told how many notes will be affected before you confirm.

✅ To-Dos and Due Dates

Any note can become a to-do, which gives it a checkbox and an optional due date. Use Make this a to-do on an existing note, or tick Make this a to-do while creating one. The same control cycles a to-do through done and back to an ordinary note.

Set a Due date on a to-do and the note list shows when it is due, marking it as overdue once the date has passed. Clear due date removes it.

Two settings change how to-dos appear in lists. Uncompleted to-dos on top floats unfinished work above everything else regardless of the sort you have chosen, and Show completed to-dos controls whether finished items stay visible. Completed to-dos are always findable by search even when hidden from the list.

Markdown checkbox lists inside a note body are separate from this, and they are interactive: ticking a box in a rendered note updates the note text.

🏷 Tags

Tags cut across notebooks. A note lives in exactly one notebook but can carry as many tags as you like, so tags are the right tool for themes that span your whole set.

Open a note and use Add tag to attach one. Typing suggests tags you already use, and picking an existing one reuses it rather than making a near-duplicate. Remove tag detaches a tag from the note, leaving the tag itself in place for other notes.

The Tags section in the sidebar lists every tag you have. Selecting one shows all of its notes from every notebook at once.

📎 Attachments

While editing a note, use Attach file to add a file. A reference to it is inserted at your cursor, and images display inline when the note is rendered. Every note that has attachments shows an Attachments panel underneath it with a Download link for each file, and a Delete option while editing.

The maximum size of a single attachment depends on your plan, and attachments count towards your account storage like everything else. If a file is too large, you are told before anything is uploaded.

Large images can be scaled down as they are attached, which saves a great deal of space over time. The Resize large images when attaching setting offers three behaviors: ask each time, always resize, or always keep the original. When it asks, it tells you the image dimensions so you can decide.

Attachments have no trash. Deleting an attachment is immediate and permanent, unlike deleting a note. If the file is also used by other notes, you are shown which ones before you confirm, because deleting it will leave those notes pointing at a missing file.

In an encrypted notebook set, attachments are encrypted too. They are decrypted in your browser when you view or download them, and are stored on our servers in a form we cannot read.

🔗 Links Between Notes

Notes can link to each other, which is how most people build up a connected set of writing over time. Clicking an internal link opens the target note, and if the note lives in a notebook you are not currently viewing, the view widens so you can actually see it.

The Show an icon on links to other notes setting adds a small marker to internal links so you can tell them apart from links to the web at a glance.

If a link points at a note that no longer exists, or at one that lives in a different profile you have not synced here, you are told plainly instead of being sent nowhere.

📊 Sorting and Custom Order

The Sort control above the note list orders your notes by Last updated, Title, Due date, Created date, or Custom order. Each can be reversed.

Custom order is the manual one. Choose it and you can drag notes into whatever sequence you want inside a notebook, which suits things like a reading order or a set of steps. The order you set is saved and travels with your notes, so it is the same in the Joplin app.

Notebooks in the sidebar sort separately, either by Title or by Last updated note, and can also be reversed. Both preferences are in Settings.

🔍 Search

The search box above the note list searches titles and the full text of your notes. Results come from your whole notebook set, not just the notebook you are looking at, and completed to-dos are included even when they are hidden from the list.

In an encrypted notebook set, searching works differently from what you might expect elsewhere, and the difference is the point. Because we cannot read your notes, we cannot search them for you. Your browser decrypts and scans them on your own device, showing progress while it works. The first search after you unlock does the most work, and later ones are quicker.

🗑 Trash and Restoring

Deleting a note moves it to the Trash, where it stays until you remove it deliberately or until it expires. Nothing is destroyed at that point, and the same is true when you delete a whole notebook.

Restore puts a note back where it came from.
Delete forever removes a single note permanently. It disappears from the Trash here and from every synced device on its next sync.
Empty trash permanently removes everything in the Trash at once.

Trash can also clear itself. The Automatically delete notes in the trash after a number of days setting turns that on, and Keep notes in the trash for sets the number of days.

Trashed notes still use storage. Notes in the Trash count towards your plan storage until they are permanently deleted, so emptying the Trash occasionally is worthwhile if you are near your limit.

🕔 Previous Versions

Notebook keeps a history of your edits, so a note you overwrote or trimmed too aggressively is recoverable. Open a note and choose Previous versions to see the earlier states that have been recorded, each with its date.

Select a version to read it, and use Restore this version to put that older text back into the note. You are asked to confirm first, because it replaces the current text.

Two settings control this, both under Note history. Enable note history turns the whole feature on and off, and Keep note history for sets how long old versions are kept before they are cleaned up. These two are shared with the Joplin app: change them in either place and both agree, since they describe the same notebook set.

Versions are recorded as you edit, whether you edit here or in the app. A brand new note has no history yet, which is normal.

ℹ Note Details

The Details panel shows what is known about the note you are reading:

Which notebook it is in
Its format, Markdown or HTML
When it was created and last updated
Its source URL, if it came from a web clipping
Its size
Whether it is encrypted
Its identifier, which is what internal links point at

⚖ Conflicts

If the same note is edited in two places before either has synced, the Joplin app keeps both rather than picking a winner and silently discarding your work. The copy that lost is preserved, and a Conflicts section appears in the sidebar holding those copies.

Read the conflicted copy, take whatever you need from it back into the note you kept, then delete the conflicted copy. If Conflicts is not in your sidebar, you have none, which is the usual state.

🔒 End-to-End Encryption

Encryption in CodaMail Notebook happens in your browser, on your device, before anything reaches us. Your master password is turned into a key locally, and that key never leaves the machine you are sitting at. What we store is unreadable to us: not just the body of each note, but its title, your notebook names, your tag names, and your attachments.

The practical consequence, which is worth being clear about, is that we cannot help you recover encrypted notes. There is no administrative override, no support process, and no key escrow. That is what makes the guarantee real.

Unlocking

When you open an encrypted notebook set, you are asked for your master password. Enter it and your notes are decrypted locally for the rest of the session. If some notes are readable and others are not, you will see a note saying how many are still encrypted, with a prompt to unlock them.

You may occasionally be told that another master password has not been entered yet while every note is plainly readable. That is not a fault. It means your account holds a second master password, usually left over from a merge, which nothing you can currently see is locked with. Attachments are fetched only when you open them, so one may still be waiting on it, and entering it also clears the way to change your master password.

Encryption requires a current browser using HTTPS. If yours cannot do the necessary cryptography, Notebook tells you rather than failing quietly.

Staying unlocked for a while

By default you are asked for your master password again every time you reload or reopen the page. That is the safest behavior and it is what you get unless you change it.

If retyping it is getting in your way, Settings → Unlocking offers Stay unlocked in this tab for, with a choice of 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or as long as the tab stays open. Your notes then stay readable in that tab without asking again until the time runs out.

The setting is remembered on this device only and never syncs, so turning it on for your own computer cannot switch it on for a machine you borrow. Closing the tab always ends it, and Lock notes now in the notebook menu ends it immediately whenever you want.

What this costs you. While the time is running, anyone who can use that browser can read your notes without knowing your master password, and it does not protect against a malicious script running in the page. Your key is held in a sealed form that is not readable by anything simply inspecting browser storage, but the honest summary is that convenience here is bought with a real reduction in protection. Leave it off on any shared or public computer.

Encrypting a set you already have

If you created your notebooks without encryption, you can turn it on afterwards with Encrypt these notes. This rewrites every note and attachment, so on a large set it takes a while and shows progress as it goes. It is safe to interrupt: whatever has been converted stays readable, and running it again finishes the rest.

Changing your master password

Use Change master password and supply your current one. This is quick even on a large set, because it re-locks your notes rather than re-encrypting each one. If you also use the Joplin app, use the new password there as well.

If your account has ended up with more than one master password, which happens when an existing collection has been merged into it, unlock everything first. The change then covers every one of them, and you are left with the single new password. Notebook will not let you proceed while something is still locked, because a password it cannot open is a password it cannot replace, and you would be no better off than before.

If you forget your master password

There is no way to recover the notes. What you can do is start over, using Delete all CodaMail Notebook data, reachable from the unlock screen through the Forgot your master password? link. It removes every notebook, note, tag, and attachment stored here, and it cannot be undone.

To confirm, you must enter your account password (not the master password you have lost) and type DELETE. Copies inside the Joplin app on your own devices are not touched by this, and the app will refuse to wipe them the next time it syncs, so if you still have the app installed on any device, check there before deleting anything.

What we can and cannot see

With encryption on, we cannot read the contents, titles, notebook names, tag names, or attachments. We necessarily know how much data you store, since it counts towards your plan, and we know when items change, since that is how a device knows what to sync. We do not know what any of it says.

Without encryption, your notes are stored as ordinary data in your account, protected like the rest of your mail but readable by our systems. This is why encryption is on by default.

⚙ Settings Reference

Open Settings from the notebook menu. Every option is listed here, in the order you will find them.

Note history

These two are shared with the Joplin app, so changing one changes it in both places.

Enable note history records earlier versions of your notes as you edit.
Keep note history for sets how many days old versions are kept.

Trash

Automatically delete notes in the trash after a number of days clears old trash for you.
Keep notes in the trash for sets that number of days.

Notes

Sort notes by chooses updated date, title, to-do due date, created date, or custom order.
Reverse sort order flips that direction.
Sort notebooks by orders the sidebar by title or by last updated note.
Reverse notebook sort order flips that direction.
Uncompleted to-dos on top floats unfinished to-dos above other notes.
Show completed to-dos keeps finished to-dos visible in lists.
When creating a new note, start in puts your cursor in the title or the body.
Show an icon on links to other notes marks internal links.
Resize large images when attaching asks each time, always resizes, or never resizes.
Save geo-location with notes stores your coordinates in each new note. This is off by default on CodaMail, and turning it on asks your browser for your location.

Markdown

These control how notes are displayed and match the Markdown options in the Joplin app, so a note looks the same in both. Each is described in the Markdown reference below.

Enable math expressions
Enable Mermaid diagrams support
Enable ==mark== syntax
Enable footnotes
Enable table of contents extension
Enable Linkify
Enable soft breaks
Enable typographer support
Enable ~sub~ syntax
Enable ^sup^ syntax
Enable ++insert++ syntax
Enable deflist syntax
Enable abbreviation syntax
Enable markdown emoji
Enable multimarkdown table extension
Enable ABC musical notation support
Enable Fountain syntax support

Editor

Editor font size in pixels.
Maximum note width in pixels, keeping long lines readable on wide screens. Zero uses the full width of the pane.

📝 Markdown Reference

Standard Markdown works as you would expect: headings, bold, italic, lists, links, images, blockquotes, horizontal rules, inline code, and fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting. Beyond that, these extensions can each be turned on or off in Settings:

Math expressions render LaTeX. Wrap an expression in single dollar signs for inline maths, or use a pair of double dollar signs on their own lines for a displayed equation. The editor toolbar has a button that inserts the block form.
Mermaid diagrams turn a fenced mermaid code block into a flowchart, sequence diagram, or similar. The toolbar button inserts a working example you can edit.
Mark highlights text written as ==like this==.
Footnotes let you write a reference in the text and its content further down, rendered as a numbered note.
Table of contents replaces [[toc]] with a generated list of the note's headings.
Linkify turns bare web addresses into clickable links without you writing link markup.
Soft breaks controls whether a single newline in your text becomes a line break in the rendered note.
Typographer converts straight quotes to curly ones and similar niceties.
Sub and sup render ~subscript~ and ^superscript^.
Insert renders ++inserted text++ as underlined.
Deflist renders definition lists, a term followed by its indented definition.
Abbreviations let you define an abbreviation once and have it explained on hover throughout the note.
Emoji converts shortcodes such as :smile: into the emoji character.
MultiMarkdown tables add spanning cells, multi-line cells, and headerless tables to standard Markdown tables.
ABC musical notation renders a fenced abc block as printed sheet music.
Fountain renders a fenced fountain block as a formatted screenplay.

Interactive checkboxes are always available: write - [ ] task for an unticked box and - [x] task for a ticked one, then tick and untick them directly in the rendered note.

📱 Syncing With Joplin Apps

CodaMail Notebook stores your notes in the same open format the Joplin app uses, so you can run Joplin on your computer or phone and keep everything in step with webmail. Joplin is free and open source, and available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and the terminal.

Nothing about this is required. If webmail is all you want, you can ignore this section entirely.

How it fits together

There are three pieces, whichever platform you are on:

An auth pair, created in Settings → DAV Server. This is a randomly generated username and password used only for syncing. It is not your account password, and it can be revoked on its own. The password is shown once, at creation.
The sync URL, shown as CodaMail Notebook sync URL on the auth pair screen. The app connects to it over WebDAV. You do not need to create a folder first, unlike some other WebDAV services.
Your master password, if you encrypted your notes. The app downloads them encrypted and decrypts them locally once you enter it. That password never reaches our servers from either side, so we cannot reset it or read your notes without it.

Step by step, for your platform

Each guide covers installing the app, the exact settings screen, the fields to fill in, and what to do when something does not work:

Windows
macOS
Linux, including the terminal client
Android
iPhone and iPad

Set the read permission at minimum. For normal two-way syncing, enable creating and deleting as well.

If you already run Joplin against another service and want to bring those notes here, the guides above are not the right starting point. Follow Moving an Existing Joplin Setup to CodaMail below instead.

Joplin is not our software. It is an independent open source project, and we are not affiliated with it. We support the sync format so you can use the app if you want to, and CodaMail Notebook works fully on its own if you would rather not.

📦 Moving an Existing Joplin Setup to CodaMail

If you already use the Joplin app and keep your notes somewhere else, on Dropbox, OneDrive, Joplin Cloud, a folder on your disk, or another WebDAV server, you do not import them here. You point the app at CodaMail instead, and it uploads everything it has. Your notebooks, notes, tags, to-dos, attachments, and previous versions all come across together, and nothing on your old service is touched.

Do not create a notebook set in webmail first. Leave CodaMail Notebook empty and let the app fill it. If you set one up here and then sync an existing collection into the same account, the two merge into a single collection, but it ends up guarded by two master passwords instead of one. Nothing is lost and everything stays readable, though you will be entering both passwords where one would have done, and the app cannot upload anything of its own until you have given it both. Starting empty avoids all of that.

If you have already created notebooks here

This is recoverable, and nothing gets lost either way. Which route you take depends on whether the notebooks you made here are worth keeping.

If they were only a trial, remove them and start clean. Delete all CodaMail Notebook data, in the notebook menu, clears everything including the stored master password, and returns you to the Start a notebook set screen you saw on your first visit. Confirm with your account password. Nothing on your other service is affected, because the app is not pointed here yet. Then begin at step 1 below.

If you have already written something here that you want to keep, do not delete it. Sync as described below. The app downloads what is already in your account and tells you that some of it needs a password it does not have. Give it that master password in its encryption settings, alongside the one it already knows. Your own notes upload only after that, because the app encrypts everything it sends with whichever key the account is currently using, and until it can open that key it has nothing to encrypt with.

Once that has happened your notes are all in one place, and both webmail and the app show everything as soon as you have supplied both master passwords. Webmail asks for the second one exactly as it asked for the first, with the unlock prompt above the note list. Keeping two passwords works perfectly well, but if you would rather not, unlock everything and then use Change master password in webmail. That replaces both with the one you choose. The Joplin app can do the same job from its side if you prefer; either way, use the new password everywhere afterwards.

What to do

In webmail, go to Settings → DAV Server and create an auth pair with Notebook permission. Allow creating and deleting as well as reading, since this is a two-way arrangement. Copy the username, the password, and the sync URL now, because the password is shown only once.
Leave webmail alone at this point. Do not open Notebook and do not create any notebooks.
In the Joplin app, open its synchronisation settings and change the synchronisation target to WebDAV.
Enter the sync URL and the auth pair as the WebDAV address, username, and password, then run its check configuration button and confirm it reports success.
Start a sync. The app treats an unfamiliar destination as empty and uploads your whole collection, so this first run takes considerably longer than the ones that follow.
When it finishes, open Notebook in webmail. If your notes were already encrypted, you will be asked to unlock them: enter the master password you already use in Joplin, not a new one.

Wait for that first sync to finish before you touch anything else. If more than one device syncs your notes, read If you sync more than one device below before you begin, because the order you do them in matters.

If you sync more than one device

Most people have at least a laptop and a phone. Bringing them all across works, and you do not need to reinstall the app or clear anything off them, but the order matters more here than it does in day to day use.

When you repoint a device, the app does not recognise that your collection is already here. It uploads its own copy of everything, over the top of what is already stored. Where the devices agree, which is the ordinary case, that does no harm at all: the notes are the same notes, so each one lands on itself, nothing is duplicated and nothing is lost. Where two devices disagree about a note, the last one you repoint wins, quietly. You do not get the conflict copies that the app would make for you if the same disagreement arose during normal syncing.

So bring them over together, and do not tidy up in between:

Sync every device against your old service first, and let each one finish. Something you wrote and never synced is fine, it travels with the device, but anything two devices disagree about is best settled before you start.
Repoint one device and wait for its upload to complete.
Repoint the others, one at a time, in the same sitting.
Only once they are all here should you start deleting, moving or rewriting anything.

That last point is the one that catches people out. A device still pointed at your old service knows nothing about what you have changed here. Delete a note in webmail on Monday, repoint your phone on Friday, and the phone puts the note back, because as far as it knows the note still exists and it is uploading everything it has. The same goes for notes you moved, renamed or filed elsewhere.

Encryption needs nothing extra. Every device already holds the same master key, so the second and later ones bring no new password with them and will not ask you for one.

If your notes were not encrypted before

Notes that were not encrypted in your previous setup arrive here readable, exactly as they were stored on the old service. You can turn encryption on afterwards, either with Encrypt these notes in webmail or from the app’s own encryption settings, and everything is rewritten in encrypted form. Until you do, they are ordinary data in your account, protected like your mail but readable by our systems.

If your notes came from an old version of the app

The sync format has used several encryption methods over the years. Webmail reads the current ones. A collection whose encryption dates back far enough may still be on a method we do not implement, in which case it uploads and syncs perfectly well, and the app keeps reading it, but webmail cannot open it. You will be told exactly that rather than being asked for a password that could never work.

The fix is on the app’s side. Its encryption settings offer to move your data to the current encryption method, which you should apply and then sync. Webmail can read your notes once that has been done.

Storage

Everything you upload counts towards the storage included with your plan, shared with Notes. A large collection with many attachments can reach that limit partway through the first sync, and the app will report that the server is out of space. See your account page for what your plan includes.

Your old service

Changing the destination does not delete anything from the previous one. Your notes stay on Dropbox, Joplin Cloud, or wherever they were until you remove them yourself, which is a useful safety net while you confirm that everything arrived. Check that your notebook count, your tags, and a few attachments all look right here before you clear the old copy.

💾 Storage

Your notes, their previous versions, and their attachments count towards the storage included with your plan, in the same way as your mail. Notes sitting in the Trash count too, until they are permanently deleted.

The largest single attachment you can add is also set by your plan. If a file exceeds it, you are told before anything uploads, and if a save would take you past your storage limit, you are told rather than silently losing the note. See your account page for what your plan includes and how to change it.

📞 Need Additional Help?

If something here did not answer your question, or Notebook is not behaving the way this page describes, contact support and tell us what you were doing and what happened instead.

One thing we genuinely cannot help with is a forgotten master password. That is the trade for notes we are unable to read, and it is worth storing that password somewhere safe today rather than discovering the problem later.