Automatic Email Processor - Changelog

• The log filter now stays applied reliably. Previously it could cancel itself while the list was being refreshed, so that filtered-out entries reappeared right away. The wording of the date filter options is now clearer as well.
• The selected log filter is now kept across a restart of the program. Previously it was reset after every restart.
• Time-based log filters are now calculated from the start of the day and by the calendar. The selected period no longer shifts during the day, and months and years are counted by the calendar instead of as 30 or 365 days.
• A log filter can now be removed completely. Even the last filter row can be deleted, and a button then helps you add a new filter.
• The settings last used for the Excel report are now remembered. The next time you create one, the period and options are preselected.
• For notification recipients, recently used addresses can now be picked from a list, instead of typing them again.
• When importing profiles from version 3, the program now recognizes accounts that are actually Outlook data files (PST). Such entries are not real mailboxes and are no longer created as incomplete email accounts, so the misleading note about incompletely configured accounts after the import no longer appears. An overview lets you decide per account whether it is an email account or a PST file; the associated profiles are deactivated for PST files.
• During installation, the setup now offers once to disable the automatic start of a still-installed version 3. This prevents both versions from starting with Windows at the same time after switching to version 4.

• On Microsoft 365 accounts, the regular complete check no longer burdens large mailboxes. It was previously run there as a full re-scan of all folders, which cost a lot of time and load on very large mailboxes. Since new and moved messages are detected by the ongoing sync anyway, the complete check now runs lightweight on Microsoft 365 accounts. On IMAP and POP3 accounts it is unchanged.
• For new installations, the complete check is now disabled by default. Most setups do not need it, because incoming messages are detected continuously anyway. If you manually move messages with an old date into a monitored folder (only relevant for IMAP and POP3), you can re-enable it under Options / Processing. Existing installations keep their current setting.
• Processing now runs reliably on accounts with very large folders that contain tens of thousands of emails. On such mailboxes the regular full check of a folder can take a long time, and under heavy load processing could previously be interrupted and restart again and again, so that it appeared to stop working until the computer was restarted. New emails are now also no longer held up as long while a large folder is being checked.
• A single email server that stops responding no longer blocks the entire processing run. If an individual action such as sending, moving or printing waits too long for an unresponsive server, it is now cancelled and reported as an error, and processing continues with the next email instead of coming to a standstill.
• An email account that was deleted and recreated can be re-linked to all profiles with just a few clicks. When an account is removed and added again, the affected profiles previously pointed to nothing ("account no longer available"). A new log tab now lists every affected profile and takes you straight to its "Monitored folders" page, where a "Re-link account" button assigns the references to an existing account. The correction is applied to all profiles that use the same account at once, no matter how many are affected.
• An interrupted response from the email server no longer leaves a check run incomplete. On very large folders a large server response could occasionally break off mid-transfer, causing the run to end early with an error and possibly miss individual emails. Such interruptions are now detected and the affected section is fetched again automatically.
• Once an email has already been moved or deleted, follow-up actions no longer report an error for it. When the same email was processed a second time by another profile or another run, an action could access the already-moved message and show up as an error in the log even though everything had been done as intended. Such actions are now treated as already completed and no longer create an error entry.
• The notification on a standstill is now recommended more clearly in the settings. If you run the software unattended, you are notified by email when processing unexpectedly stops, so you do not have to check yourself. If the account chosen for sending is itself monitored, a note now points out that a separate account is better suited for this.
• When catching up with a limited time range, the start time now matches the time shown on the emails. The start and end time entered in the dialog was previously evaluated without taking the local time zone into account, so that depending on the time zone emails at the edge of the chosen range were missed and the start time had to be shifted by hand. The entered time is now interpreted as local time and matches the time shown in your email program.
• Date ranges in filters and in the link editor now take the local time zone into account. When filtering by “date between” and when setting a period in the link editor, the received date was previously evaluated in Coordinated Universal Time. As a result, emails from the first hours of a day could be assigned to the previous day depending on the time zone and were missed at the edge of the chosen range. The date shown in your email program is now decisive.
• The initial scan of very large mailboxes now resumes after an interruption instead of starting over. For mailboxes with many thousands of existing messages the first scan can take a while. If it is interrupted in between, for example because a renewed sign-in is required, the part already scanned is now kept and the next run continues from there instead of starting again from the beginning.
• The automatic report is sent only once per interval again. When the report was set to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, it could previously be sent repeatedly on every check during the day. It is now sent exactly once for each interval, as configured.
• The report email shows the summary again in the message body. In addition to the attached spreadsheet, the email now contains the overview table with the number of processed messages per status directly in the body, so you can see the result at a glance without opening the attachment.
• A weekly or monthly report is now caught up if its scheduled day was missed. If the computer was switched off or the software was not running on the configured weekday or day of the month, the report was previously skipped for that whole week or month. It is now sent on the next run instead, still only once per period.
• A missing account for the report is now reported instead of going unnoticed. If the email account selected for the report no longer exists, the report is still sent using the first available account, and a note in the error log now points this out so you can select a valid account again in the settings.

• Nested folder paths are now shown consistently in the familiar Outlook style with a backslash as the separator throughout the settings. On IMAP accounts whose server uses a dot as its separator, destination folders for moving and copying were previously shown in mixed notation (for example "Rechnungen.2026" instead of "Rechnungen\2026"). The base folder field, the result preview and the log display now all use the same, easy-to-read notation.
• Some optimizations

• Emails are now reliably moved and copied into dynamic subfolders on IMAP accounts even when the destination folder already uses dots as its separator. When the target path combined a dot-separated base folder with a dynamic subfolder (for example a year folder via <EmailYear4>), the server could reject the assembled path. The folder path is now automatically converted to the separator the server uses before each action. This completes the fix from version 4.0.25. Microsoft 365 accounts were not affected.
• IMAP folders newly created while moving or copying are now shown automatically, so they appear in Outlook and webmail right away. When processing created a new destination folder (for example a dynamic year folder), it reported successful processing, yet depending on the server the folder could stay hidden and the moved email appeared to be missing. A folder that was previously created hidden is made visible the next time an email is moved into it.
• The result preview now shows the actual destination folder with resolved placeholders when moving and copying. Previously the dynamic subfolder was still shown there with the placeholders themselves (for example <EmailYear4>) instead of the concrete values from the sample message.
• When signing in to Microsoft 365, a note appears if a shared mailbox was accidentally entered as the sign-in account. In that case the differing sign-in caused repeated sign-in prompts. The note explains how to enter your own account as the sign-in and the shared mailbox in the "Shared mailbox" field. After signing in again, processing also resumes immediately instead of waiting for the next check interval.
• When you delete a Microsoft 365 account, its saved sign-in is now removed automatically. Previously it remained in the background and in rare cases had to be removed by hand. In addition, the "Remove credentials" button now reports clearly when there was no stored sign-in under the entered user name.
• The Windows service now clearly points out when it is running under the "Local System" account. Under this account the email accounts, the license and the Microsoft 365 sign-in are not available, so no processing takes place. The note appears in the service's diagnostic data, making the cause easy to spot. The service should run under the Windows user account that the program was set up with.
• When the external processor (for example the Windows service) is not active, a note in the status bar explains the possible causes. For instance, it points out that the service is not running or is running under a different Windows user account than the program.

• Emails are moved and copied into dynamic subfolders correctly again on IMAP accounts. When the "Move email" or "Copy email" task wrote into a dynamic subfolder - for example a year folder created via <EmailYear4> - the target folder path was assembled incorrectly on IMAP accounts. As a result, the email was not moved or copied and the log reported that the folder does not exist. The folder path is now built correctly, so the email ends up in the intended subfolder - including the corresponding line (e.g. "Email moved") in the details column of the log. Microsoft 365 accounts were not affected.

• Email actions now also run when the match occurs in an embedded message. When the profile filter only matched an email attached as a message (.eml) - for example, emails whose attachments are contained in an inner message - the content tasks such as "Save attachments" were executed, but the tasks acting on the outer email itself (move, copy, delete, mark as read, flag ...) were not. As a result, the outer email remained unchanged in the monitored folder. The program now behaves like AEP 3 again: a match on the inner message counts for the email as a whole, and the configured email tasks are applied to the outer message - including the corresponding line (e.g. "Email moved") in the details column of the log.
• Embedded messages now respect delayed processing and processing times. Profiles with a configured processing delay or restricted processing times now check attached messages at the intended time - just like regular emails and as in AEP 3. In addition, in one particular case the log no longer incorrectly shows "No match" for emails with an attached message even though processing was successful.
• Easier account setup: server settings are detected automatically. When setting up an IMAP or POP3 account, entering the email address and password is now sufficient for many well-known providers from all over the world (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, GMX, Orange, Libero) - the program fills in server, port, and encryption automatically.
• Getting-started guide for new users. As long as no profile has been created yet, the main window shows a short three-step guide - with direct buttons for setting up the email account and creating the first profile, plus a link to the „Getting started“ guide.
• Step-by-step guides directly in the toolbar. The guides for typical tasks (e.g. saving attachments automatically, setting up an email account) are now available via a dedicated „Guides“ button next to the main window menu.
• Help is easier to find. The „Profile settings“ and „Program options“ windows now show a subtle hint to the help (F1) in the lower left corner; clicking it opens the help page for the currently displayed page.

• „Replied“ filter criterion now also works with Microsoft 365 accounts. Previously, the replied status was not retrieved from the server for Microsoft 365 accounts - the criterion could never match there. The program now detects for these accounts as well whether an email has been replied to.
• Status criteria can now be combined with delayed processing. Properties such as „Replied“, „Read“, „Flagged“, or the category are usually set only after an email has been received - so these criteria could hardly ever match when checked right after arrival. If delayed processing is enabled in the profile, the email is now held back until the delay has elapsed and is then checked with its current status. This makes scenarios possible such as: „Move replied emails to another folder two hours after arrival“.
• Notes about limitations directly in the filter dialog. When selecting the criteria „Read“, „Replied“, „Flagged“, and „Category“, the dialog now shows which account types support the respective property and when the check takes place.

• Attachments inside embedded emails are detected again. When an incoming mail contains a full email as an attachment (for example, a forwarded message as an .eml file), profiles will now also check the attachments of that inner mail against the filter and run matching tasks (save attachments, print, download, ...) accordingly. The behaviour can be set per profile under „General“ → „Embedded message handling“ - the setting was already imported from AEP 3 but had no effect in the first 4.x versions, so such mails ended up in the „No Match“ tab.
• Attachment-name filter behaves like in AEP 3 again. A criterion like „Attachment name contains .pdf“ or „Attachment name does not contain .exe“ now only matches when the mail actually has at least one attachment - exactly as it did in AEP 3. The first AEP 4 versions had drifted from that behaviour: with the negative variant („does not contain“), plain text mails without attachments were also counted as matches. As a result, profiles imported from AEP 3 that were only supposed to handle mails with specific attachments unintentionally picked up every reply and newsletter as well. After the update, existing profiles behave as originally configured.
• „Last applied“ column in the profile list is now always up to date. Previously, the displayed time could lag one processed email behind and only show the correct value after restarting the program. In addition, the date of deactivated profiles was not preserved permanently - after a restart, the column was empty for those profiles. Both issues are fixed.

• Unreachable accounts are detected and shown clearly. When Microsoft reports that a mailbox is not reachable in the cloud (for example because the licence has expired, the mailbox has been deleted, or it has been moved to a local Exchange server), the program previously kept retrying the sign-in for every mail check - and blocked the rest of the run for several minutes. Starting with this version, such accounts are detected directly and shown in a new „Unreachable Accounts“ section in the activity log. From that section the Microsoft 365 admin center can be opened with one click to investigate.
• Microsoft 365 sign-in stalls significantly shortened. If the program had previously crashed during a sign-in - for example because a notebook was closed during standby - the next sign-in was blocked for up to ten minutes until the program recognised the previous attempt as stuck. That wait time is now reduced to three minutes. A real sign-in including MFA confirmation fits in comfortably; an actual block resolves three times faster.
• Diagnostic sections for unreachable folders and accounts appear only when needed. The two activity-log sections „Unreachable Email Folders“ and „Unreachable Accounts“ are now only visible when entries actually exist. For setups that run cleanly, the empty tabs disappear completely, keeping the activity log uncluttered.
• Stall detection reacts faster. The „Processing has stalled“ notice now appears after 20 minutes without a successful mail check (previously: 60 minutes). Existing installations keep their previously configured value; only new installations use the new default. The threshold can still be adjusted under „Options / Processing“.
• AEP 3 import warns about Outlook data files (PST). When importing an AEP 3 profile that monitors a folder inside a mounted PST file, the import dialog now shows a clear warning - PST files are intentionally not supported in AEP 4. The notice points directly to the recommended workaround: drag the emails you want to process from the PST into a server folder (e.g. an IMAP inbox) in Outlook and monitor that folder instead. Previously the PST store was silently created as an "account", which caused the imported profile to appear as „unreachable“ after activation without an obvious reason.
• Postponement count in profile list and activity log now match. The „Postponed“ column of the profile list and the count in the „Postponed Processings“ activity-log section could diverge in edge cases, because historical postponement entries remained in the log even after the corresponding mail had already been processed. Such orphaned entries are now filtered out.
• „Last applied“ column refreshes more reliably. In rare scenarios, the date of the last processing in the profile list could lag behind the actual state by up to a day, even though a fresh entry was already visible in the activity log.
• Move/Copy to an unreachable destination account shows a clear message. When a move or copy task targets a different account that is currently marked as unreachable (e.g. mailbox deleted or licence expired), the task no longer fails with a generic server error message. Instead, the activity log shows a specific notice with the destination account name and the remaining wait time. Other tasks in the profile (save attachments, print, mark as read, ...) run as usual; the next processing cycle after the destination account becomes reachable again will pick up the pending emails automatically.
• Corrections take effect immediately. When you edit an account in the options and save it (for example after correcting a typo in the organization identifier) or click „Retry now“ in the diagnostic section, the background process picks up your change immediately without requiring a program restart. Deleted accounts no longer leave internal leftover entries behind.
• Notification on first occurrence. When an unreachable account is encountered for the first time, a one-time notification appears in the Windows notification area pointing to the diagnostic section in the activity log. This way you see the problem even if the main window is minimized or the program runs in the background. Subsequent hits for the same account do not trigger further notifications - the entry in the activity log remains the ongoing diagnostic source.

• Custom Microsoft 365 folders are now reliably detected by the background process. Until now, a custom top-level folder (e.g. „Ausgelagert UO” or „Auto-Mails-DJ” - not a Microsoft standard folder like „Inbox” or „Sent Items”) could be reported by the background process as „unreachable”, although the folder was clearly present in Outlook and in AEP's folder picker. Background: the background process's Microsoft 365 connection only populated its internal folder list when the option „Include subfolders” was enabled. Without that option the list stayed empty and the name resolution failed. This list is now populated automatically at the first mail check, independently of the subfolder option. Affects profiles with custom top-level folders or profile paths from an AEP 3 import under „Archiv/…”.
• The „Correct…” button on the „Unreachable email folders” tab now also asks about move/copy destinations whose folder path starts with the old path. When an unreachable folder is remapped via „Correct…” to a new path, only the monitored folders in the affected profiles were rewritten so far. If the same profiles also contained move or copy tasks whose destination folder started with the old path (e.g. monitored: „Archive/Invoices”, move destination: „Archive/Invoices/<EmailYear4>-<EmailMonth>”), those destinations stayed unmapped - on the next processing run the same path resurfaced as an error. Before saving, AEP 4 now shows a confirmation dialog with the number of affected move/copy tasks and a concrete example mapping; „Yes, update all” rewrites the path prefix there as well, „No, source folder only” keeps the previous behavior. Safety net for profiles where the automatic split between static base path and dynamic path portion from an earlier import was later merged back manually.

• New diagnostic hints for unreachable email folders. When a profile folder under "Archive/…" on a Microsoft 365 account cannot be resolved, AEP 4 now points to the most likely cause directly in the error text: the "Online Archive", which Microsoft 365 keeps as a separate mailbox and which AEP 4 cannot reach directly. In addition, every entry in the "Unreachable email folders" tab now shows when the path was last successfully resolved, so you can tell at a glance whether you are looking at a long-working folder that suddenly fails (transient error) or at a path that never worked (hint at a broken import path).
• Hint when importing AEP 2 / AEP 3 profiles with archive paths. If the import detects monitored folders below "Archive/…" for a Microsoft 365 account, the import report now lists one hint per affected account, indicating that these paths may point at the Online Archive mailbox and should be verified before the profiles are activated.
• Full path visible in the folder picker. The folder picker now shows the full path of the highlighted folder below the tree (e.g. "Archive/Cancellations"). With ambiguously named folders you can now reliably tell which branch you have actually selected.
• Fully translated English program interface. In earlier beta versions some user-facing text was still shown in German for English customers - specifically the V2 / V3 profile-import warnings, the error messages from the "Save to database", "Download file" and "HTTP call" tasks, as well as the file pickers (destination folder, program, sound file) and placeholder menus in the task settings. These areas now consistently follow the program language setting.
• Beta status has been ended

• Placeholders in the subject prefix now work in all tasks that have a subject prefix. Previously, in the "Follow-up" (prefix added after successful processing), "Copy email" (prefix of the copy) and "Forward" (prefix of the forwarded message) tasks, placeholders such as <EmailYear4>, <EmailMonth>, <EmailDay> or <SenderAddress> were inserted literally instead of being expanded. A prefix of "<EmailYear4>-<EmailMonth>-<EmailDay> " is now correctly resolved to "2026-06-02 ".
• A new "Insert placeholder" button now sits next to the subject prefix input field. The button opens a structured menu from which a placeholder can be picked and inserted at the current cursor position inside the prefix, without having to remember the exact syntax.
• New "Primary attachment is optional" option in the "Save to database" task. When the task has an attachment-related column enabled (Name of primary attachment, Primary attachment as Blob or Attachments as ZIP file), a message without a matching attachment was previously always skipped with status "No matching attachment" and did not reach the database. The new option on the "Options" tab reverses that behaviour - the message is written to the database even without an attachment, and the attachment columns are simply left empty. Useful for order confirmations and similar notification mails that may or may not carry an attachment.

• The time shown in file names now matches the local time of the message, just like the printout. Previously, when the file name pattern included a time placeholder such as <EmailHour> or <EmailMinute>, the value was written in UTC rather than the local time zone - on a computer running in Central European Summer Time this caused the file name to be two hours earlier than the time printed in the message header or in the generated PDF. The placeholder engine now converts the message time to local time before substituting it, so the file name and the visible time inside the document match again.
• Inline images such as logos and signature stamps are now visible in printouts and PDFs again. Previously, when the task "Print message" was used - either to a physical printer or to a PDF printer - images that were embedded directly in the message body were not resolved by the rendering engine and appeared as an empty frame with a small "x" placeholder.

• The warning bar for incompletely configured email accounts no longer covers the last profile row.
• The "Duplicate profile" function now selects the newly created profile and scrolls the list to it. Previously the copy was created but stayed at the end of the list without the user being able to tell that it had been created - particularly noticeable when scrolling through many profiles. The selection now switches to the new copy and the list scrolls to it.
• The category selection in the "Set category" task is noticeably easier to use. Three improvements at once: suggestions now appear in alphabetical order (previously in the server order of the Microsoft 365 mailbox); the filter-as-you-type is case-insensitive - "po" now also finds "Portman"; and as soon as the user scrolls with the mouse wheel, the suggestion drop-down closes automatically so that the previously clicked category becomes immediately visible as a chip below the input line.
• The "Postponed processing" tab now shows the same count as the "Postponed" column in the profile list. Previously the tab counter could show one more postponement than the profile list summed up - for example, after deactivating a profile with pending postponements. Orphan entries are now cleaned up automatically on the next processing run.

• The Microsoft account picker no longer appears when not needed. Previously, during token refresh - e.g. after the sign-in expired or when reconnecting - the Microsoft account picker could appear even when the configured user name was already unambiguous.
• Several improvements to prevent the background process from being stopped prematurely by the internal stall watchdog. During long-running sign-in operations, during the initial indexing of large mailboxes, and while resolving the Microsoft 365 standard folders, the background process now sends regular keep-alive signals so the stall detection does not trigger by mistake. In addition, the standard folder lookups are now spread out (one after another with a short pause) so Microsoft 365 does not impose short-term throttling. Particularly noticeable on accounts with many thousand emails in the inbox and on stricter Microsoft 365 tenants.
• The "Message header contains ..." filter now also matches against .msg sample messages in the result preview. Previously the preview showed "No" for a .msg file even though the searched address (e.g. a specific recipient address) clearly appeared in the message's internet header - this typically affected .msg files exported from Microsoft 365 or Outlook (classic). The internet header is now read from the corresponding Outlook property when the .msg file is loaded; for internally delivered messages without an internet header, a synthetic header is constructed from the parsed addresses and subject so the filter evaluates reliably regardless of the file's origin.
• Profiles imported from earlier versions with dynamic placeholders in the move or copy path are now split correctly. In profiles imported from Automatic Email Processor 3 that used folder paths with placeholders such as Inbox\Invoices\<SenderDomain>, the placeholder previously stayed together with the static portion in the "Dynamic subfolders" field, so the base folder remained empty and processing could create folders named literally Inbox/Invoices/<SenderDomain> (with the angle brackets). On import and when opening existing profiles the path is now automatically split into "Base folder" (static portion) and "Dynamic subfolders" (placeholder portion). A hint in the profile editor points out the auto-correction when an existing configuration was adjusted.
• Outdated hints in the notification area are now removed automatically. Messages that the background process had stored for later display (e.g. a hint about a temporary processing stall and its resolution) are removed at program start when they are older than seven days. This prevents hints from already-resolved episodes from staying in the UI indefinitely.
• More resilient iteration over the internal message database. In very rare cases where an entry in the internal database was incomplete (e.g. after an unclean shutdown during a write), the next start could produce follow-up errors when iterating the data. Such entries are now skipped instead of aborting the entire iteration.

• The received date of a copied or moved email is now preserved in the destination mailbox. Applies to all supported combinations (Microsoft 365 ↔ Microsoft 365, IMAP ↔ IMAP, Microsoft 365 ↔ IMAP).
• Adding a subject prefix and replacing attachments now preserve the original received date as well.
• When uninstalling, AEP now offers to delete your application data. The uninstall wizard asks once at the end whether profiles, options, accounts, OAuth sign-ins, processing history, and logs should be removed along with the program. Default is „No“ - existing data is preserved unless you actively confirm. Silent uninstalls (e.g. via Group Policy) skip the prompt and never delete user data, so unattended workstation rollouts cannot accidentally wipe profiles.
• The „Message“ column in the database now also contains a header block when the email body itself is empty. The behavior is controlled by the existing „Remove header from message text“ option in the task settings - default is off (i.e. header is included), matching the version 3 default. Customers who imported their profiles from version 3 keep their previous setting; new profiles get the header by default.
• All time-of-day input fields in the program have been unified. Two narrow text boxes with a colon between them, accepting numeric input only.

• Emails can now be copied or moved from one mailbox to another mailbox. Previously, a copy or move task with a different destination account accidentally ended up in the source folder (creating a duplicate), because the selected destination account was ignored. Now the email is transferred completely (including attachments and headers) to the destination account, and when moving, deleted from the source mailbox afterwards. If the append at the destination fails, the source email is preserved - no data loss. Supported combinations: Microsoft 365 ↔ Microsoft 365, IMAP ↔ IMAP, Microsoft 365 ↔ IMAP. POP3 as destination is technically impossible (no folder concept).
  Note for Microsoft 365 to Microsoft 365 copies: The copy is shown as "Draft" in the destination mailbox. Content, attachments, sender, and recipients remain unchanged; only the status marker in Outlook is affected. The reason is a constraint of the Microsoft Graph API, which only allows cross-mailbox uploads into the Drafts folder. The profile editor displays a clear hint when such a copy task is being set up.
• The profile list now shows the shared mailbox address for Microsoft 365 delegate access instead of the signed-in user. The "Monitored email folders" column previously displayed the underlying user (e.g. info@company.onmicrosoft.com) even when the profile monitored a shared mailbox like team@company.com. The display now follows the configured shared mailbox address, making it instantly clear which mailbox the profile is actually processing.
• The "This app is preventing Windows from shutting down" warning no longer appears when shutting down or signing out of Windows. AEP now distinguishes between a normal window close and a system shutdown and releases immediately in the latter case. Data processed up to that point is already secured by continuous saving.
• The "Decrypt copy / save without digital signature" option works again. For an S/MIME-encrypted email, the copy is now stored in plaintext in the destination folder - readable even without the recipient's private key. This requires the corresponding private key to be available in the current user's certificate store (Personal); if it isn't, a clear message appears in the processing log instead of silently storing a still-encrypted copy.
• The "If attachments are replaced, create the copy afterwards" option works again. When a profile both replaces extracted attachments with link files (.attlnk) and creates a copy of the email, the copy now contains the link files instead of the original attachments. This keeps the archive compact - each copy is a few kilobytes instead of several megabytes.
• The Categories option in the copy dialog is now only active when the destination account is Microsoft 365. IMAP and POP3 accounts have no categories concept; previously you could enable the option but it had no effect. A short hint in the dialog now explains why the option is disabled.
• When saving to a SQL database, the Message and Recipient names/Sender name columns are now populated meaningfully even for HTML-only emails and emails without a stored display name. Previously these columns remained empty when the incoming email had only an HTML part without plain text (today the norm for automatically sent invoice emails) or when the sender wrote only the bare address without a display name in the To: header. The message text is now derived from the HTML part (with tags stripped) when no plain-text part exists, and the name columns fall back to the email address when no display name is present. This closes the parity gap with Automatic Email Processor 3, which used to obtain this resolution via Outlook.
• The plain-text rendering of HTML emails now preserves the paragraph structure. Previously, paragraphs and line breaks were merged into single spaces when HTML was converted to plain text, so a longer email appeared as one unreadable block in the Message database column, in a text file (Save Message task), in quoted replies and forwards, and in filter comparisons.
• Very large emails (over 100 MB) are now rejected with a clear error when copied across accounts, instead of overloading memory in the background.

• When you first sign in to Microsoft 365, only a single browser window opens. If, after spending a long time searching for your password, you wondered why another login window suddenly appeared: that no longer happens; AEP patiently waits for your input.
• Enhanced detection of standard mailbox folders in Microsoft 365.
• Improved notifications when mailbox folders are not found.
• Several optimizations
• Due to the changes in AEP 3.8.25, both versions of AEP can be run simultaneously

• Microsoft 365: Sign-in throttling (AAD throttling) is now reliably detected when connecting. When Microsoft throttles the token request for an account because of too many requests (for example during a server-side mailbox move between Exchange servers), AEP now pauses the affected account already at the connection stage for 5 to 30 minutes (with an increasing wait time on repeated hits).

• Filter lists and lookup tables verify the referenced file when you save. When you create or edit a filter list or a lookup table and enter a path that does not exist (typo in the file name, deleted file, wrong drive), AEP now shows "File not found - please check the path." in the window title bar as soon as you click OK, so you can correct the entry immediately. Until now the missing file was only noticed at runtime while an email was being processed - with corresponding entries in the error log and unexpected profile results.
• Single-profile export uses the profile name as the suggested file name. The context-menu command "Export profile..." now suggests the profile's name as the file name (e.g. IncomingInvoices.json instead of an empty default). Characters that are not allowed in file names are automatically replaced with a dash, so a profile called "Order confirmations: Customer XY" can be saved as Order confirmations- Customer XY.json.
• Filter lists now also support the XLSX format. A filter list can now point directly to an Excel workbook (.xlsx or .xls) - until now only plain text files (.txt, .csv, .lst) were possible. The edit dialog automatically detects Excel files; the separator and character encoding are not relevant in that case and are hidden. The column to use is selected via its column number as usual (1-based), and the first row can optionally be marked as a header. This way, maintenance tables (such as customer or supplier lists) that are already kept in Excel can be referenced without an intermediate export step.
• Status display reacts immediately to a changed check interval. When the quick-check interval is reduced in the options (e.g., from 2 minutes down to 1 minute), the ongoing wait now picks up the new value immediately and starts the next check accordingly earlier. Previously the old wait first had to run out completely - during that time the status bar got stuck at "Next check in 0 seconds", which looked like the program had frozen.

• Subject prefix works again on Microsoft 365. On Microsoft 365 accounts, the "Add subject prefix" task failed. As a result, all subsequent tasks on the same profile match were skipped with "Skipped - previous task failed" (set category, mark as read, move). The same fix applies to the subject prefix in the "Copy email" task.
• Replace attachments and restore attachments work again on Microsoft 365. The "Replace attachments" task (with .attlnk link files) as well as the "Restore attachments" action from the log view were affected by the same Microsoft API limit as the subject prefix.

• Microsoft 365 processing no longer gets stuck after an access token expires.
• Throttled Microsoft accounts are skipped for the remainder of the run.
• Throttling is now made visible. AEP now displays a warning message in the user interface when Microsoft throttling occurs (account name + note about the 5-minute pause), so that noticeable delays in profile processing no longer appear unexplained.
• Locked accounts are displayed during the catch-up run. If an account involved in the catch-up run is currently locked due to a server throttling, AEP now asks before starting whether the account should still be attempted or skipped - displaying the end time of the lock. Previously, AEP skipped such accounts without comment, and the user wondered why their catch-up run had once again failed to process the affected account.
• Security update for the processing of Outlook .msg files.

• Regression fixed: AEP paused for the duration specified under Options > Processing > Pause until the next message is processed after every single message was checked — even if the message did not match any profile and therefore no external system was addressed. As in AEP 3, the pause is now applied only after messages that were actually processed by a profile and, as a precaution, after errors. It is omitted for messages with no matches.
• Microsoft 365 profiles are no longer blocked during long processing runs. For large mailboxes or many shared accounts, a full scan can take hours. During this time, the Microsoft login for the access token retrieved once during connection establishment expired, causing all subsequent requests for the affected account to fail. The result: Individual profiles appeared to stop running at a certain point, but manually clicking "Catch up..." worked immediately. AEP now detects this state and automatically retrieves a new login.
• Improved handling of ongoing Microsoft mailbox migrations. When Microsoft moves a mailbox to a different server, the current run is now ended immediately for the affected mailbox, and AEP retries in the next cycle.
• Visibly earlier sign of life after program start. AEP used to run the full check right after start - on large mailboxes it correspondingly took a long time before the first profile produced a result. Instead, a quick check over the current time window now runs first, producing matches in the log list within seconds. The full check follows immediately afterwards.
• The status bar now shows which account sent the IMAP IDLE push. Previously the message was generic ("IMAP IDLE: push notification received ..."). With multiple IMAP accounts it was not possible to tell which mailbox just fired. The account and monitored folder are now included, e.g., "IMAP IDLE push received for 'info@mydomain.com\Inbox' ...".
• Backup directory paths inherited from AEP 3 installations are detected on startup. If you migrated from AEP 3 to AEP 4 and had configured the AEP 3 default path under Options > Backups, your backups continued to land in the AEP 3 directory. An exact AEP 3 default path is now automatically and silently switched to the AEP 4 default path on startup. For paths that differ but still contain "Automatic Email Processor 3", the value is left unchanged and AEP issues a hint that the path should be reviewed.

• When two active profiles monitored the same account and the same physical folder, but the monitored folder path was stored with a different letter case (e.g., "Invoices" and "invoices"), AEP treated the two as separate folders. Folder comparison is now consistently case-insensitive throughout AEP.
• When ticking "Use profile-specific processing times" under the General section of a profile, in some setups the Edit button only appeared after closing and reopening the profile settings. The area now behaves like the other option-dependent input fields: grayed out before the option is enabled, immediately usable afterwards.

• Microsoft 365: access to delegated mailboxes without prior mailbox conversion. Until now, delegated access in AEP only worked on true shared mailboxes (license-free, no separate login). Regular user mailboxes that an administrator delegated via full-access permission were rejected by the Microsoft Graph service with "403 ErrorAccessDenied" - even though the delegate had full access. With the extended permission scopes, both types now work without mailbox conversion.
  • When first connecting an existing Microsoft 365 account, a new Microsoft login prompt may appear to confirm the additional permissions.
  • The sender address for delegated access is automatically set to the address of the shared mailbox - without an explicit "Override sender" value, the login user would otherwise appear in the From header.
  • If the shared mailbox address or another connection parameter (client ID, tenant ID, login name) is changed later, AEP automatically discards the internal synchronization markers. Previously, new mails could be polled silently against the old mailbox in the background and would only appear during a manual "Catch up..." run.
• Imported Microsoft 365 profiles with subfolders under the inbox are processed reliably again.

• Microsoft 365: All subfolders are now displayed again in the folder selection dialog. For some Microsoft 365 mailboxes (likely only with certain third-party providers) , the Graph service returned an incorrect subfolder count for top-level folders, so that only Inbox, Sent Items, and similar default folders were visible in the selection dialog. User-created subfolders were completely missing.
• No more stuttering interface when loading very large folder structures. The folder query now runs in the background; a progress bar displays "Loading..." while the list is being built.
• More robust folder selection dialog with clearer error messages. In case of server issues or unusually deep folder hierarchies, a 15-second timeout now applies instead of making the user wait for minutes.

• Attachments from Apple Mail, etc. are now correctly recognized as regular attachments. Single-page PDFs (e.g., air waybills, tickets) that these mail programs tag with an internal preview identifier were previously treated as embedded images and skipped by tasks such as 'Print attachments' or 'Save attachments'.
  • Profiles using the "Has attachments" filter criterion now also match such messages.
• Folder paths are now displayed consistently in the Outlook style.
• Minimum interval for the quick check can be lowered to 1 minute again. The default remains 2 minutes; setting it to 1 minute now displays a clear warning in the options dialog. When importing a backup, values below 2 minutes are still raised to 2 minutes so that the current user does not unknowingly start with an unstable interval.
• During account setup, the SMTP server is no longer auto-filled from the IMAP server while typing.

• Faster recovery after connection problems.
• Notification "Processing is running normally again" as soon as the connection is possible again.
• The minimum interval for the quick check has been raised to 2 minutes. For accounts with multiple monitored folders, this prevents server rate limits. Existing configurations with shorter intervals will be automatically adjusted on the next load.
• New menu item: "Create backup for support assistance..."
  • Creates a reduced backup that you can send to support.
  • Automatically excludes sensitive data: email accounts, database connections, license data and processing history.
  • Contains an info file that transparently lists what is in the archive and what is not.

• Filter lists and subject prefixes were forgotten during import
• The ‘Recipient Type’ filter is now imported correctly
• Minor fixes

Automatic Email Processor 4 is a completely redesigned major release. The program no longer requires an installed Outlook client and instead connects directly to your email accounts - via IMAP, POP3 or the Microsoft Graph API for Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com. Exchange Server mailboxes can still be connected as long as the server's IMAP service is enabled.

• Direct access to email accounts - no Outlook installation required; native support for IMAP, POP3 as well as Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com (via the Microsoft Graph API)
• Real-time detection of new emails via IMAP IDLE and Microsoft Graph delta sync
• Redesigned user interface with a clear profile list, status and processing indicators and consistent keyboard navigation
• Bounce detection for forwarded emails - automatic recognition of undeliverable messages (DSN/NDR) and notification of the sender
• Service and headless mode for unattended operation as a separate program instance
• Profile migration from earlier versions - existing profiles from Automatic Email Processor 2 and 3 are imported with automatic format detection
• Enhanced security - AES-V2 encryption, TLS certificate pinning, password storage in the Windows Credential Manager (DPAPI) as well as protection against ZIP bombs and path manipulation
• Comprehensive online help and step-by-step instructions, accessible directly from the program