Contacts

Contacts store information about people you communicate with. Organize them in contact books, share them with your team, and sync them from email providers or external systems.

Contact books

Contact books are containers for your contacts. You can create multiple books to organize contacts by purpose (Sales, Support, VIPs) and control who has access.

Creating a contact book

1

Open the contacts panel

Click your avatar at the top of the left sidebar and select Contacts, or use the command bar (⌘/Ctrl + K) and search for "contacts".

2

Create a new book

Right-click in the contact book list and select New contact book.

3

Configure the book

Enter a name for your contact book. To share it:

  • Check Share this contact book with others? to open sharing options

  • Select Share with entire organization or choose specific teams/users

  • Optionally check Exclude contacts from search results? to hide these contacts from global search

Managing contact books

To edit or delete a contact book, right-click on it in the contact book list and select Edit contact book or Delete contact book.

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Sharing contact books

Share a contact book by right-clicking it and selecting Edit contact book, then checking Share this contact book with others?

You can share with your entire organization, a specific team, or individual users. All shared users can view and edit contacts. Only the owner and organization admins can change sharing settings or delete the book.

Personal vs shared contact books

Type
Who can access

Personal

Only you

Organization

Everyone in the organization

Team

Members of a specific team

Specific users

Selected users you choose

Managing contacts

Creating a contact manually

1

Open the contacts panel and select a book

Click your avatar at the top of the left sidebar and select Contacts, then choose the contact book where you want to add the contact.

2

Start creating

Click Create contact at the bottom of the contacts list.

3

Fill in contact details

Enter the contact information:

Basic info:

  • First name, middle name, last name

  • Prefix (Dr., Mr., etc.) and suffix (Jr., Sr.)

  • Nickname, gender, pronouns

  • Avatar (drag an image or click to upload)

Company/Organization:

  • Company name (creates or links to existing organization)

  • Job title, department, location

Group membership:

  • Add to contact groups for categorization

Contact info:

  • Email addresses (labels: work, home, personal, other)

  • Phone numbers (labels: mobile, main, home, work, home fax, work fax, pager)

  • Physical addresses

  • Social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

  • Website URLs (labels: homepage, profile, blog, personal, work)

  • Custom fields (your own label + value pairs)

Notes:

  • Free-text notes field (supports markdown)

4

Save the contact

Click Create to save the contact to the selected book.

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Click More fields in the form to reveal additional fields like prefix, suffix, phonetic names, and physical addresses.

Creating contacts from conversations

When viewing a conversation, the details sidebar shows email addresses and phone numbers from the messages. For addresses not yet in your contacts:

  1. Select the email or phone number in the sidebar

  2. Click Add to contacts in the popup

  3. The contacts panel opens with a new contact form pre-filled with the address

Viewing a contact

Click any contact in the list to open their contact card. The card shows all saved information: name, company, email addresses, phone numbers, social media, and notes.

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You can also use the command bar (⌘/Ctrl + K) to quickly open contacts. Type "contacts" to open the contacts panel, or "open contact book" to jump directly to a specific contact book.

From the contact card you can:

  • Star the contact to mark them as important

  • Edit to update their information

  • View all conversations to see every conversation involving this contact

Editing a contact

  1. Click the Edit button in the contact card header

  2. Modify any fields

  3. Click Save to confirm changes

You can also change which contact book a contact belongs to from the edit form.

Starring contacts

Click the star icon in the contact card to mark important contacts. Starred contacts appear with a star indicator in the contact list.

Deleting a contact

  1. Click the More button in the contact card header

  2. Select Delete

The contact is deleted immediately.

Companies and groups

Beyond contact books, you can organize contacts using companies and groups:

  • Companies (organizations) link contacts to their employer. Add a company name when creating a contact to associate them. Multiple contacts can belong to the same company.

  • Groups work like tags for contacts. Use them to categorize contacts across companies (e.g., "VIPs", "Leads", "Partners").

Companies and groups are useful for:

  • Filtering contacts in the contacts panel

  • Creating rule conditions (e.g., "if sender is in company Acme Corp")

  • Quickly finding all contacts from the same organization

Syncing contacts

Google contacts sync

Sync contacts between Missive and your Google account:

1

Open account settings

Go to Settings > Accounts and select your Gmail account.

2

Enable contact sync

In the Start syncing section, click Sync contacts.

3

Access synced contacts

A dedicated contact book is created for your Google contacts. Changes sync both ways - edits in Missive appear in Google Contacts, and vice versa.

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To import contacts into a synced Google contact book, use the Google Contacts interface. They'll automatically sync to Missive.

Office 365 contacts sync

Sync contacts between Missive and your Microsoft account:

1

Open account settings

Go to Settings > Accounts and select your Outlook/Office 365 account.

2

Enable contact sync

In the Start syncing section, click Sync contacts.

3

Access synced contacts

A dedicated contact book is created for your Microsoft contacts. Changes sync both ways between Missive and Outlook.

Importing contacts from CSV

Import contacts from a CSV file into any contact book that isn't synced with an email provider. Right-click on a contact book and select Import contacts (CSV).

Missive supports CSV files in Google and Outlook formats. See Importing contacts for supported fields, template files, and troubleshooting.

API sync

Contacts can be synced programmatically using the Missive REST API. This is useful for integrating with CRMs and other business systems.

See the REST API - Contacts documentation for endpoints and examples.

Using contacts in rules

Rules can check contact membership and automatically create contacts.

Contact conditions

Use these operators on address fields (From, To, Cc, etc.) to match contacts:

Operator
Matches when

in contact book

Address is in a specific contact book

not in contact book

Address is not in a specific contact book

in contacts

Address exists in any organization contact book

not in contacts

Address does not exist in organization contacts

in contact group

Address belongs to a contact in a specific group

not in contact group

Address is not in a specific contact group

in contact company

Address belongs to a contact in a specific company

not in contact company

Address is not in a specific company

See Rule conditions for the full list of operators.

Example use cases:

  • Route messages from VIP contacts to a dedicated team

  • Skip auto-responses for existing customers

  • Apply different labels based on contact company

Create contact(s) action

The Create contact(s) action automatically adds new contacts from incoming messages:

  1. Add a Create contact(s) action to your rule

  2. Select the target contact book

  3. When the rule fires, sender/recipient addresses are added as contacts

This is useful for building a contact database from incoming leads or support requests.

Contact sidebar

When viewing a conversation, the details sidebar shows contact information for all participants:

  • Matched contacts: Shows contact cards with full details for addresses in your contact books

  • Unknown addresses: Shows the email or phone with an Add to contacts option

  • Quick actions: Copy name, copy email/phone, new email, view all conversations

Hover over any address to see a preview popup with contact details and quick actions:

  • View contact / Add to contacts: Open or create the contact

  • All conversations: Search for all conversations with this contact

  • All from [domain]: Search for all conversations from the same email domain

  • Copy name / Copy email: Copy contact info to clipboard

  • New email: Start composing a new email to this address

Searching contacts

Search within contacts

Use the search field at the top of the contacts panel to find contacts by:

  • Name (first, last, nickname)

  • Email address

  • Phone number

  • Company/organization name

  • Notes content

  • Custom field values

Filter by contact book

Select a specific contact book from the list to limit results to that book. Select All to search across all your contact books.

Shortcuts

Shortcut
Action

⌘/Ctrl + Shift + ,

Open contacts panel

⌘/Ctrl + K then "contacts"

Open contacts panel

/

Navigate contact list

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