How to process incoming emails one by one

Questions
1

Hi. How to process incoming emails if there are a lot of old emails (for several years) in the mailbox? If I set the email rules “[“ALL”, [“SINCE”, “February 18, 2025”]]”, then when I stop and restart the workflow, the system starts processing all emails again. How can I make sure that only new emails are processed?

Information on your n8n setup

  • **n8n version: 1.70.1
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • **Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker
  • **Operating system: Ubuntu 22.04
2

There are several approaches:

  • Use the Remove Duplicates node to filter out emails you have already processed.
  • Move processed emails out of the inbox.
  • Apply a tag to processed emails and ignore those in future executions.
3

Thank you. Can you give a little more detail?

  • Move processed emails out of the inbox.
    I don’t have Gmail, it’s not a very popular email.

  • Apply a tag to processed emails and ignore those in future executions.
    How to do this?

  • Use the Remove Duplicates node to filter out emails you have already processed.
    After the imap node, put this Remove Duplicates? Does the system store data about processed letters somewhere?

4

That’s gmail specific - the equivalent on another service would be to move the email to a folder.

Yes - correct. n8n has a database where it stores processed IDs. See the documentation that I linked to :slight_smile:

5

In the standard IMAP node there is only - mark as read.

6

Thanks for your help.

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7

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