How to Set Up Einstein Activity Capture in Salesforce and Sync Email and Events

Sales reps spend 60% of their time on tasks that aren't selling. That figure comes from Salesforce's State of Sales report, a survey of 4,050 sales professionals across 22 countries run in August and September 2025. Salesforce names manual data entry among the culprits, and Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) is its built-in answer.

You enable it in Setup, connect your team's Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts, choose what to sync, and let it run in the background.

This guide walks you through setup in six steps, the changes Salesforce shipped between Summer '25 and October 2026, and the limits you'll run into. We checked every Salesforce limit against Salesforce Help in October 2026, and we keep more figures like these in our Salesforce statistics roundup.

One disclosure before we start: Cirrus Insight sells a product that competes with this feature. The setup and limits sections stick to what Salesforce documents, and our own product only appears near the end, with its downsides included.

What Is Salesforce Einstein Activity Capture (EAC)?

Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) is a Salesforce tool that automatically logs emails and calendar events and links them to the right Salesforce records. Instead of asking reps to copy every message or log every meeting by hand, it captures that activity in the background. Captured items then appear on the activity timeline of related Salesforce records.

The point is simple. Keep customer and prospect data current in the CRM without adding manual work, so managers and RevOps see real engagement instead of a half-empty timeline.

EAC is just the abbreviation most people use, and you'll see both names in Salesforce's documentation. It replaces manual activity logging for three kinds of data, which are emails, events and contacts.

Who Benefits Most

• Sales reps stop logging every email and meeting by hand.
• Managers get a current view of deals in motion and can coach from real email and meeting engagement.
• RevOps and admins get consistent, standardized activity data across the team.

How Einstein Activity Capture Works: Email, Events and Contacts

Einstein Activity Capture connects Salesforce and your email and calendar provider through an authorized connection, which belongs either to each user or to the whole org. Salesforce supports three back ends: Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365, and Exchange on-premises.

Each type of data then moves in its own way, and the differences matter when you plan your email and event capture.

One rule shapes everything else. If an email doesn't match a contact or lead, Salesforce doesn't save it at all, according to its considerations for captured email.

How to Set Up Einstein Activity Capture in Salesforce

From an admin seat, the work is quick, and the steps are nearly identical for Outlook and Gmail. The only real difference is which provider you authenticate against.

The clicks take minutes, but the decisions inside them deserve more thought. Each step below flags the choice that matters most.

Step 1: Confirm Your Edition and License

Einstein Activity Capture Standard, or EAC Standard, ships with Sales Cloud Starter, Pro Suite, Professional and Enterprise, and Salesforce makes it available for 100 users. Unlimited, Einstein 1 Sales and Agentforce 1 editions include the fuller version.

Four paid licenses include that fuller version too: Einstein for Sales, Sales Engagement, Inbox and Revenue Intelligence. Salesforce lists the differences between editions in one table that's worth bookmarking before you talk to your account executive.

Step 2: Assign the Permission Set

Standard users take the Standard Einstein Activity Capture permission set, and past the first 100 users, Salesforce documents a second one labeled Additional User. Performance and Unlimited users take Einstein Activity Capture Included or Sales Cloud Included instead.

A permission set alone isn't enough. Each user also has to belong to an active configuration, which you'll build in Step 5.

Step 3: Open the Settings Page

From Salesforce Setup, type the feature name into Quick Find and select Settings. If it's your first visit, a guided flow walks you through the remaining choices. This page also tells you whether someone has already turned the feature on.

Step 4: Choose Your Email and Calendar Service

Pick Google, Microsoft Office 365, or Microsoft Exchange, then decide who authenticates. Your options are each rep individually (user-level) or you, once, for everyone (org-level).

User-level is the quicker start because each rep connects their own account one time. Org-level gives you central control, and it lets you run Salesforce's built-in test on a single user's connection.

Connecting Salesforce with Outlook on Office 365? New connections have authenticated through Microsoft Graph since Spring '26, so there's nothing extra to do on that front.

Step 5: Build the Configuration

The configuration holds your real capture settings, so name it something obvious, such as "Sales Team, Outlook". Choose whether to capture emails, events, contacts, or all three, then set the direction for events and contacts.

Next, set how far back to reach, knowing that a new connection pulls up to 50,000 emails from the past 180 days for each user by default. Assign users or profiles, then open the Excluded Addresses tab and add your own domain so internal threads stay out.

Running a privacy-sensitive team? Advanced Settings offers header-only email capture, which stores sender, recipient, and timestamp without the subject or body. The trade-off is that Email Insights don't work on header-only messages.

Step 6: Check Matching, Connect Users and Test

Matching runs through a Salesforce Flow called Activities: Match Email to Records, which you'll find under Setup, then Flows. The default suits most orgs, but if you match on a custom email field or a custom object, use Save As and edit your own copy.

With user-level authentication, each rep connects their account in their own settings and accepts the terms, which is a one-time step. Then send a few test emails to a known contact and confirm they land on the activity timeline of related records.

Be patient with reports, because Salesforce says data can take up to 24 hours after the initial setup to show up in standard reporting.

Post-Setup Checklist

• Tell users activity capture is live and what it collects.
• Confirm each rep has connected their email account.
• Turn on admin notifications for connections marked Disabled or Needs Attention.
• Check storage usage after the first week, then monthly.

Sync Email as Salesforce Activity: What Changed Since Summer '25

If you learned EAC before mid-2025, relearn this part. Email used to sit in a separate store that reports couldn't reach, and now Salesforce saves it as standard Salesforce records.

Sync Email as Salesforce Activity makes captured email available to reports, flows, triggers, and APIs. That opens up reporting and automation the old model blocked, and the timeline below shows how the change rolled out.

Skip the migration date, and Salesforce does it for you, with full email capture and your maximum retention history. You can't stop the process or roll it back.

Mariel Domingo at Salesforce Ben reported in July 2026 that mature orgs were running into storage limits after the Spring '26 switch. Check your own numbers before an overage notice arrives.

Outlook Integration Deadline: Move EAC to Microsoft Graph Now

Microsoft started disabling Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Exchange Online in October 2026 and plans to finish in April 2027. Any EAC, Inbox, or Lightning Sync connection to Office 365 made before Spring '26 still relies on EWS until you upgrade it.

Salesforce set October 1, 2026 as the date to upgrade by. If Outlook email stopped appearing in Salesforce this month, check this first. The upgrade runs from prompts in Setup, and you can't roll it back to EWS afterward.

Two related notes apply here, and the first is that the shutdown covers Exchange Online, so Exchange on-premises connections aren't affected. You also can't run this feature alongside Lightning Sync, which matters because Salesforce retires Lightning Sync in 2027.

For the side-panel half of the picture, see our Salesforce Outlook integration guide, which covers what the add-in does between Salesforce and Microsoft 365 that background capture doesn't.

Where EAC Stores Your Data and How Long It Stays

Where your data is stored depends on that one email setting, and Salesforce's retention documentation spells out both paths.

Do the math before you switch, because at 50,000 emails per user, a 150-user team has a ceiling of 7.5 million historic emails on first connection. Every captured email also gets a matching Task, so long threads fill related lists fast.

Salesforce recommends archiving email regularly to keep Salesforce data storage costs down. Build that job before the bill arrives, and decide early who on your team owns it.

How to Report on EAC Data After Activity 360 Retires

Salesforce is retiring Activity 360 Reporting, Activity Metrics and the Activities Dashboard. If you set up after Summer '25, you never had them, and everyone else needs a new home for their dashboards.

The replacement is plain Salesforce reporting. Use standard activity reports and the Last Activity Date metric, and make Email Message the primary object when you want email only. Custom report types you've already built on Email Message pick up captured email with no changes.

Want the full activity history for one account? The same report types work there, because each email has a Task behind it.

Know what you give up, though: with the new setting on, Activity Metrics, Recommended Connections and parts of Pipeline Inspection stop working. Salesforce's notice, dated September 28, 2026, still lists the retirement as upcoming, so rebuild dashboards now instead of waiting for a date.

7 Limitations of Einstein Activity Capture to Plan Around

EAC saves time, but it has real constraints. These seven come straight from Salesforce's setup considerations and its notes on captured email.

1. No attachments. Attachments aren't synced or stored, so a rep who needs one has to open the original message in their mailbox.

2. Primary address only. Capture covers the primary email address on the Salesforce user record and nothing else. Aliases and secondary addresses are out, so a shared team mailbox with its own address doesn't fit.

3. One org per user. Salesforce doesn't support the same user connecting across multiple Salesforce orgs. Test in a sandbox, then remove users from that configuration before adding them in production.

4. Matching picks one deal. Default logic weighs record ownership, recent activity and other factors. On an account with a renewal and an upsell open together, it has to choose, although reps can correct a match by hand and their fix sticks.

5. No match, no record. An email with no matching Salesforce contact or lead never gets saved. Create the contact, and only email from that point forward is captured.

6. Custom objects take flow work. Out of the box, matching targets standard Salesforce objects. Relating email to a custom object means customizing the flow, and Salesforce warns that complex rules can slow things down.

7. Event series have gaps. Google series move one way, sending Google events to Salesforce only. Recurring events created in Salesforce Classic aren't supported at all.

None of these make EAC a bad tool. They just define the ceiling of what a built-in, standardized capture tool can do.

How Much EAC Costs and Which Salesforce Edition You Need

It isn't a product you buy on its own, because Salesforce bundles it into editions and add-ons. The real question is which path you're on.

Salesforce's add-on price list has shown Sales Cloud Einstein at $50 per user per month, billed annually. Treat that as a starting point and ask for a current quote, because list prices move. Keep in mind that any add-on fee sits on top of your existing Sales Cloud license.

The cost teams miss in 2026 is storage. Every captured email now counts against your data allocation. On the legacy path, one paid license lifts retention to 24 months for every user in the org.

Common EAC Setup Mistakes, Including Three of Our Own

Most problems trace back to a handful of setup choices, and these are the ones Salesforce's own notes warn about.

Skipping Excluded Addresses. Leave your own domain off the list, and internal threads can end up in Salesforce, using storage and cluttering records.

Leaving manual logging on. If reps keep clicking Log Email in the Outlook or Gmail side panel, the same message gets logged twice.

Expecting old email to re-match. Change a contact's email address and earlier emails stay where they were, because matching isn't retroactive.

Forgetting signature plug-ins. Salesforce warns that tools such as CodeTwo and Mimecast can alter email headers and break threading on the timeline.

Rolling out to everyone on day one. Before enabling EAC org-wide, run a pilot group for two weeks and watch what it does to storage.

What We Got Wrong in Our August 2026 Version

The August 2026 version of this guide had three errors, and you deserve to know about them. We said the feature was cloud-only, but it also connects to Exchange on-premises. We pointed every user to Einstein Activity Capture Included, which belongs to Performance and Unlimited editions.

We also said older email had no migration path, when Salesforce had already begun auto-migration notices in June 2026. All three are corrected above.

Which Salesforce Teams Can Use Einstein Activity Capture Without a Second Tool

Our position is to turn EAC on first, because you've already paid for it and the data now lands somewhere you can report on. Run it alone when the left column below describes you.

There's a second reason to start with what you own. In the same Salesforce survey, sales teams reported juggling an average of eight tools, and 51% of sales leaders said tech silos hinder their AI efforts. A ninth tool should have to clear a high bar.

Our own search data backs up that right-hand column. In the three months to October 3, 2026, questions about multiple orgs reached this page more than 300 times. Among limit-related questions, custom objects and multi-opportunity accounts came next.

Alternatives to Einstein Activity Capture: Three Routes

If the right-hand column sounds like you, compare your capture options by the job each one does.

Salesforce's own inbox integrations. The free side-panel integrations let reps log email on demand, attachments included. Salesforce Inbox adds send-later scheduling and email tracking in Salesforce, and our Salesforce for Gmail page covers the Google side.

Third-party tools. Products such as Cirrus Insight and Revenue Grid run their own engine for a separate license, and we compared one of them in our Revenue Grid vs EAC article.

Sales engagement platforms. Tools such as Salesloft and Outreach log activity as a by-product of running sequences, which makes sense if you're buying sequencing anyway. If you aren't, start with our list of Salesloft alternatives.

Cirrus Insight vs Einstein Activity Capture

Where EAC wins. It's included, it's native, and it adds no new vendor to your security review. It also supports Exchange on-premises.

Where Cirrus Insight is the wrong choice. It costs extra when the Standard version is free. Email, calendar and task sync together run $18.50 per user per month, and the five-minute sync cycle is another $5. Historic email backfill is a scoped service, not a switch.

Where it earns its keep. Attachments travel with the email, custom objects are handled in settings, and one user can reach more than one org. The details are on our Salesforce email sync page and the Cirrus Insight vs EAC comparison.

Choosing Your Activity Capture Approach

Einstein Activity Capture is a solid way to automate standard email and calendar logging, and the Summer '25 changes made it better by moving activity into native records. For teams with a standard setup, it may be all you need.

So start there: run the Graph upgrade if you're on Office 365, set your excluded addresses, and watch storage for a month. Once you set up EAC properly, most of the old complaints about it no longer apply.

If attachments, custom objects or multiple orgs still block you, that's the moment to test a dedicated tool. Whatever Salesforce activity capture tool you choose, it's only as good as its matching. You can start a Cirrus Insight free trial with no credit card and compare the two on your own data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Does Einstein Activity Capture Do?

It captures email and calendar events from a connected Google or Microsoft account and adds them to related records automatically. It also keeps events and contacts aligned between the two systems, so reps stop logging activity by hand and managers see a complete timeline.

Is Salesforce Einstein Activity Capture Free?

Yes, in its Standard form. EAC Standard comes with Sales Cloud Starter, Pro Suite, Professional and Enterprise for up to 100 users. Unlimited, Einstein 1 Sales and Agentforce 1 editions include the fuller version, as do paid licenses such as Inbox and Sales Engagement. Captured email counts against your data storage, so budget for that.

How Do I Turn On Einstein Activity Capture?

From Setup, enter the feature name in Quick Find and open Settings. Choose your mail service and connection method, build a configuration, and assign users. A full Einstein Activity Capture setup has six steps, listed at the top of this guide.

How Do I Check if EAC Is Enabled?

Open Setup, search for the feature and select Settings. An org with it turned on shows its configurations and connected users there, and Company Information lists how many licenses you've assigned.

Where Is EAC Data Stored?

It depends on one setting. With Sync Email as Salesforce Activity on, email is saved as Task and EmailMessage records in your org and counts against storage. Without it, email sits in a separate Salesforce-run store for 6 or 24 months, depending on your licenses.

Can EAC Relate Email to Custom Objects?

Yes, but not out of the box, because default matching covers only contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities. To relate email to a custom object, you customize the Activities: Match Email to Records flow, ideally in a sandbox first.

Does EAC Capture Email Attachments?

No. Salesforce doesn't sync or store attachments from captured email, so the attachments related list stays empty. Reps open the original message in their mailbox to get the file.

How Does EAC Handle Several Open Opportunities on One Account?

It picks the one it judges most relevant, weighing record ownership, recent activity and other factors. Reps can change the match by hand, and the correction sticks.

Can One User Connect EAC to More Than One Org?

No. Salesforce doesn't support the same user in more than one org, sandbox included. Remove a user from the sandbox configuration before adding them in production.

Is EAC Sync One-Way or Two-Way?

It's mixed. Email is captured one way, into Salesforce, while events and contacts can move one way or both, depending on the direction you set in the configuration.

What Is a Good Alternative to Einstein Activity Capture?

It depends on what's blocking you. Salesforce's side-panel integrations suit reps who want to log email by hand. Third-party tools such as Cirrus Insight suit teams that need attachments, custom objects or more than one org, and sales engagement platforms suit teams already buying sequencing.