How to Use Zoom Mail and Calendar

In the fall of 2022, Zoom announced a new mail and calendar client built into its meetings and chat interface.

It merges your email and calendar with meetings, team chat, and phone.

Zoom Mail and Calendar are free to use, but you’ll need to download and install the latest version of the app.

In this post, we take a look at how to enable Zoom Mail and Calendar and start using it for the first time.

What is Zoom Mail?

Zoom Mail is a built-in feature that allows you to access a third-party email account (Gmail or Microsoft 365) within the Zoom interface.

The interface is clean and minimal. It’s a lighter version of the Gmail interface, so there’s no learning curve.

If everyone in your team signs up for the Zoom Mail service, you get the added benefit of end-to-end encryption for those emails. Note, everyone needs to be on Zoom Mail for end-to-end encryption to apply.

This is what the Zoom Mail screen looks like once you’ve set it up:

Emails live in the Mail tab on the desktop client. You can switch to Team Chat, Meetings, or Calendar more efficiently since you won’t have to switch apps.

What is Zoom Calendar?

Zoom Calendar is a built-in feature that allows managing your Zoom or third-party calendar account. Currently, Zoom supports Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 calendar accounts.

You can schedule and manage new meetings within Zoom once you’ve set up your calendar account.

The calendar feature embeds your calendar account data into the desktop client. This gives you a minimalistic view of all your scheduled events.

Here’s what the Zoom Calendar interface looks like:

Prefer Google Calendar and want to integrate that with Zoom?

You may also like: How To Integrate Zoom With Google Calendar

How to set up Zoom Mail and Calendar

To set up Zoom Mail and Calendar, you need to start by upgrading your Zoom application to the latest version. The features are available on version 5.12.8 or higher.

To update the Zoom desktop client to the latest version, click on your profile picture. Select the Check for updates option and update the app if a newer version is available.

If the app is up to date, you’ll see a message that reads, “You are up to date.”

Launch the updated Zoom desktop client. You’ll see the Mail and Calendar tabs at the top.

Select Mail. Then, click on Sign in with Google or Sign in with Microsoft, depending on the email account you want to connect to. Or, you can create a Zoom email account.

The app will redirect you to the login screen for your Zoom account. Log in, select the relevant email service, and provide read and write permissions.

You can also provide read and write permissions for Zoom Calendar during this process if you want to set it up. Once you’ve checked the relevant boxes, click Next.

Log in with your email account credentials in the next step. Then, provide the necessary permissions from within your email service.

Return to the desktop client, and you’ll see your mailbox load in your Zoom desktop client. Click on the Calendar tab at the top to see all your calendar events in Zoom.

How to use Zoom Mail

The Zoom Mail interface offers all the essential mailbox functions.

You can refresh your mailbox using the refresh icon at the top.

You can switch between list and split view in your mailbox. To change your view, click on the cogwheel icon at the top right and select your preferred view.

Hovering over an email shows quick actions like delete, archive, mark as read, and star (to list an email as starred).

When you open a specific email, you see more options. From here, you can mark an email as spam or add a label to the email.

Clicking on the ellipsis reveals more options, like printing the message and creating a filter.

If you want to compose a new email, go to the main screen in the Mail tab and click the new email icon.

The compose window has all the text formatting options you find in Gmail and other email services.

If you signed up with a Zoom email account, you also get the password protection feature.

This feature creates an email link that expires after a specific time (a day, a week, or a month). Once it expires, the recipients can’t access the email and its contents.

How to apply filters in Zoom Mail

You can search for read, unread, starred, or unstarred messages emails by using a filter. To apply a filter, click on the tiny arrow next to the checkbox at the top, and select a relevant filter.

More filters are available within the search option. Clicking the search icon at the top-right shows more filter options that help find emails with attachments or sent emails.

How to change email settings in Zoom Mail

Click on the cogwheel icon at the top-right and select Email Preferences. This will take you to Zoom Mail settings.

Email preferences are divided into three sections:

• General: This section includes settings for unread emails, push notifications, automatic image retrieval, undo send (how long you have to undo send before an email is sent), and signature.

• Filters: Here, you can create filters to make searching through emails easier. You can filter emails that are from a specific person or group of people, have or don’t have a specific text string in the subject line or body, and are more than specific bytes in size.

• Vacation: This section includes options for setting up an automated response. You can enter a start and end date, subject line, body, and select the group of people to whom you want to send an automated response.

If you want to log out of your email account from Zoom Mail, select the logout option at the bottom left.

How to use Zoom Calendar

Clicking on the Calendar tab from the top shows the calendar with data from the account you’ve connected.

You can switch between day, work week, and week views from the top-right of the screen.

The forward and backward buttons help you navigate the calendar. And the today button brings you back to the current date.

The more options icon at the top-left reveals two more options. The first option lets you view the entire calendar month (with the option to switch to past or future months). The second option lets you view the calendar events of other people in your contacts.

You can start instant meetings using your PMI (personal meeting ID).

Click on the down arrow next to Meet Now and select View personal meeting ID (PMI). Or, you can select Copy PMI link and share a link instead of an ID.

How to schedule a Zoom Calendar event

Click on the + New Event button at the top to create a new event. Or, you can double-click on a given time slot on the calendar.

You’ll see a side panel pop out once you use either of these options.

Add the event title, invitees, date and time, calendar you want to schedule the meeting for (if you have multiple calendars), location, description, and attachments.

Further down the panel, you have options to set participant permissions. Here, you can choose if participants can modify the event, invite others, and see the guest list.

You can set the event type, change the passcode (or use the auto-generated passcode), and select if members need the host’s approval to join the meeting.

Can you send a Zoom invite as a calendar invite?

Yes, you can send a Zoom invite as a calendar invite.

After you create a meeting, log into your Zoom web portal account. Go to the Meetings section and select a meeting.

Select Google Calendar. This will take you to Google Calendar. Select the Email guests option at the right of the screen.

Add the email addresses you want to invite and click Send.

Conclusion

Using the Zoom Mail and Calendar client is easy. As it’s literally built into the same place you live for messaging and meetings, it makes sense to embed your email and calendar here.

Using Zoom Mail and Calendar helps reduce context switching by bringing two of the most commonly used apps to a single interface. You get almost all Gmail, Google Calendar, and Microsoft 365 features you’re used to within the Zoom app.

Setting up Zoom Mail and Calendar is pretty straightforward.

As the setup process doesn’t take long, you can always try Zoom Mail and Calendar and return to the Gmail or Microsoft 365 interface if you don’t like Zoom Mail and Calendar.

But to have everything in a single interface seems like a pretty good deal.

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