Is there a way to link emails from Google Sheets?

Question

I'm trying to find a way to link to an email from my Google Sheets. We use our spreadsheet as a way to track bugs, issues, to-dos, and milestone timelines (we've tried other apps, this works best). It would be great if we could reference/link to an email so that we can provide additional information.

Otherwise, I'm assuming converting the email to a Docs and then linking, is that possible?

Update: I would like to attach the body of the email, or at least link to it. For instance, say I got an email from Bob regarding the status of 'Feature A', I would like to link to that email. I was thinking of converting relevant emails to Docs and then putting it in the right folder, but I want to link to it, rather than say "Look at Document - Bob Email Re: Feature A".

Answer 1

My interpretation is that you want to add a link to your spreadsheet that leads to a Google Mail message?

Open the email message in Google Mail. The URL in the address bar is the link you want to use. I do this all the time with my own personal task tracking.

However, if multiple people are using your spreadsheet system and they all have their own non-shared accounts, I'm not so sure how useful that link to an email message will be. I believe only the person who's mailbox contains the message will be able to use the link.

Answer 2

You could use a collaborative inbox, which is a feature of Google Groups for Business that gives multiple persons access to a mailbox.

When viewing a message in the collaborative inbox, you could copy the URL to that message, and paste it in your spreadsheet.

See Google's documentation: Use a group as a collaborative inbox

Answer 3

There is Google Labs feature in Gmail to convert email conversation to Google Docs; then you can copy the URL of the Docs that you just created and insert it as a link from another Docs.

Answer 4

Assuming you want the email there for more information, and you want others to be able to access this email, it might be best to import the email into Evernote or another note-taking application that you use and then give it a share url from there.

Answer 5

You could use the VLOOKUP function.

Example on how to use it:

Let's say you have table with your members like this:

    |          A          |      B      |      C      |
--------------------------------------------------------
 1  |       E-mail        |    Name     |   Company   |
--------------------------------------------------------
 2  | [email protected]  | Bill Gates  |  Microsoft  | 
 3  | [email protected]   | Sergey Brin |  Google     | 
 4  | [email protected]     | Steve Jobs  |  Apple      | 

1. Select the table
2. Right click on it and Define named range...
3. Give it a name: data
4. Go to cell A20 and write there [email protected]
5. Go to cell B20 and write =VLOOKUP(A20, data, 2, FALSE)
6. Check what happened :)

Answer 6

EASY. There are 4 or 5 chrome extensions that scrap email to sheets or excel. I use Export Emails to Google Sheets by cloudHQ - Google Chrome. cloudHQ has dozens of chrome and gmail add-ns. Couple dozen are free. The 3 or 4 that I use all work as advertized.

here's a 2.5 minute youtube showing how it works. Easier than any other idea posted here.