Can I disable Gmail message "threading"?

In Gmail what does the following mean in the Inbox:

Dave,me(2)

Where can I change the setting?

Dave's Answer:

This is an interesting message because what you're talking about is one of the more desireable features of Google's Gmail service, from what I have heard from users. It's how Gmail keeps your discussions in "threads" (actually, Gmail calls it "conversations", but threads is a more common name for the capability).

What Gmail is showing you here is that someone named Dave sent you a message, then you responded. Both of those messages are viewable simultaneously, and there are a total of 2 messages in that thread.

For example:

Here you can see that Marissa and I have been sending mail back and forth for a while: there are 11 messages in our conversational thread, the first of which was from her and the most recent of which was from me. The little paperclip by the date also shows that at least one of the messages in the thread has an attachment. The word Nintendo is the subject of the message and the first few words of the most recent message in this thread are "I have attached a release with more info..."

If I open up the message, note how Gmail has a slick presentation of the entire discussion thread and an all-important "Expand all" if I want to see all of every message rather than just the most recent:

As to your question, I don't believe that there's any way to turn this feature off, but since it's such an integral part of Gmail and so darn useful, I suggest instead that you might spend a few weeks trying to get used to it. Once you're comfortable with it, I think you'll find it a very elegant way to keep track of your email discussions.

Update: You Can Turn Off Gmail Threading!

Finally, Google's made this an option and you can indeed turn off message threading on your Gmail account. To do so, check out this newer article: Finally, How to Disable Gmail Threading.

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Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics (Article 5975, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: gmail, google gmail
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Reader Comments To Date: 341

Nitty said, on July 20, 2009 1:57 PM:

I came here trying to find out how to disable email grouping in Gmail, but see now that there is no solution. I need to view all my emails to a person chronologically so I can reconstruct how a decision was reached, but of course Gmail won't let me sort by date alone. It's so stupid! I have had a Yahoo email account as well for many years, and, starting now, am going to use it exclusively.

Kasper said, on July 22, 2009 7:42 AM:

I guess the best solution is using the IMAP features to ex. Mac Mail. That works great - also the integration to gmail.

Mihai said, on August 4, 2009 4:34 PM:

I hate gmail's threading/conversation. I have missed so many emails because of it, but i need gmail for all the other google products. I wish you can just use traditional email set-up. Just let the email come into my inbox. I hope some one at google on the 20% creative time, comes up with a hack or google lab option.

Cheerz said, on August 4, 2009 5:03 PM:

Threading SUCKS. I have lost a number of important contacts by supposedly deleting one conversation, only to lose it ALL. Eg: If you want to save a copy of a sent message, but delete, say an undeliverable notification from your inbox, you ALSO LOSE the copy from your SENT file!! More cocky 'innovation' where none was necessary from the Google 'geniuses.' DO NO EVIL.

kevin said, on August 4, 2009 10:17 PM:

I hate gmail threadnig. It SUCKS!!!

Dave said, on August 10, 2009 4:53 PM:

I certainly would have thought by now that Google would have made this an "option". I'm sorely disappointed that they have not. I too am on gmail's "threading/conversation" hate train. Can't stand it. I understand fully well that some do... heck, maybe even most do. Google, with all due respect, please make this a 'turn-on' or 'turn-off' function. Please.

Angus said, on August 10, 2009 7:26 PM:

I appreciate the intent of this feature, but the paradigm solves a problem I don't have and creates several others in the process. The official response above has a somewhat patronizing tone that Google knows what I want better than I do. Google needs to be careful of making the same mistake as other Silicon Valley companies who started to believe they could ignore their users and get away with it. Either give me the option to view my messages in a format that I and many other people seem comfortable with or I'm sure we can find some other company that does.

Erik said, on August 16, 2009 2:27 PM:

The conversation view is horror for me. Since there are haters and lovers I fail to understand why Google does not make this into an option.

It sounds simple, just provid a possibility to sort the messages by date.

bobj said, on August 24, 2009 7:16 PM:

Good grief... these comments have been gathering here for more than 3 years, and this "bug" (it's not a feature when you hate it) still isn't fixed. I came here looking for a way to disable the conversation view but find that I can't.

This means that a gmail replacement is in order for me, too!

John said, on August 29, 2009 1:47 AM:

Agree.Agree. Agree.
We use Gmail for receiving emails from contact forms. All from different people about different things but jumbled up together as a single conversation. The only hope is that a disable option seems to be a popular request on the select a feature page for Gmail. To make your views made directly to the Gmail team go into Gmail and then Gmail Help then About Contacting Support (at bottom) then Send us suggestions for future features. Lets hope the squeaky wheel gets the grease!

Paul said, on August 31, 2009 5:21 AM:

Wow - gotta love the answer - use it for a few weeks and get used to it?

So do it the Google way or leave? I'll leave thank you very much and go to a proper email provider who will let you read your mails as they were sent and not messed about with.

Google trying to re-invent email? give me a break....

Online Sales Manager said, on August 31, 2009 8:22 PM:

Looks like it is not going to be fixed. This thread has been going on now for as long as I can remember. It is a shame, but I have decided to move to another service where I can simply just receive my emails in chronological order. Anyone got any suggestions (apart from Outlook)? Since I travel a lot, I need to access my email over the web. I can't believe that Google are being so arrogant about this. You would normally expect that sort of arrogance from the crowd in Redmond, Washington.

Gmail does suck said, on September 6, 2009 6:11 AM:

Can Google PLEASE just make conversation view an option???

Yeah, the conversation view is really, really bad! I'm going to request unthreaded e-mail at:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/st...
as reported earlier in this thread. But I can only imagine how many people have done that and the problem never gets fixed after years and years. I know I showed my sister gmail and she hated conversation view too... I'm sure there are tons of people who have just accepted the fate of the Gestapo Google..

Obviously, CONVERSATION VIEW SHOULD BE OPTIONAL! There are many cases where OBVIOUSLY conversation view is not the best solution. Just like Chrome, Google feels a need to limit our options to make things simpler and more user friendly. I actually do agree with making things as simple and user friendly as possible but look at this huge thread here. Google is forcing everyone into a more complicated and less user friendly world through their own arrogance and a mandatory conversation view!

Now, if Google is so unbelievably stubborn with something this freakin' OBVIOUS and simple to change, imagine how much of a control freak they will be if they actually start making a real operating system. Or get any more power than they already have!! OBVIOUSLY GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!! It's too bad we all depend on Google so much for search. And just think, with all the searching we do, they probably have a pretty good database of all of us. Omniscient power to the Control Freaks!!!

Just imagine if real mail worked like conversation view. Who needs real mail coming in chronologically each day in a mailbox. I mean, if your mom sends you a physical piece of mail, it should just appear immediately next to any other letters your mom sent you over the years in some filing cabinet. Instead of checking your mailbox to see if she sent you something recently, you should be going through every file in your filing cabinet to see which people actually sent you something that day. Yeah, Google, you've really got this one figured out.

Isn't it nice to get mail chronologically? Like a breath of fresh air really.

Mr. Big Boss Man arrives at the office. He's quite meticulous and always likes to examine the mail the post man delivers each day.

Mr. Boss Man
(to his secretary)
Where is my mail? You usually place the new mail on my desk in the morning!

Secretary Gaggle
I've thought of a better way Mr. Boss Man.
I filed all of it away in our file cabinets.

Mr. Boss Man
What? Was there nothing important in it?

Secretary Gaggle
No, there seemed to be a lot of important stuff. But I thought I’d just file it away to save time later on.

Mr. Boss Man
Our filing cabinets are filled with year’s worth of archives. How am I supposed to find the stuff that just came in?

Secretary Gaggle
Oh, I put a little mark on every piece of mail. Just pull out all the folders and look for the bold mark. I’m sure you find most of it. The good news is that it’s already been filed so now you don’t even have to see it!! Look how clean your desk is!!!

Mr. Boss man gets up and opens a filing cabinet. He flips through some folders trying to find some of the recent mail.

Mr. Boss Man
How am I supposed to find any of my mail. Do you remember any of it?

Secretary Gaggle
Well, just ask me... I can help you search.

Mr. Boss Man
Ok. Did that customer Ms. Henkin send any mail? I was expecting something from her.

Secretary Gaggle
Oh, yeah. I think she did. But I didn’t put it under her file name because she was asking about our new product. So I filed it under the “new product” folder.

Mr. Boss Man
This is ridiculous!!! How am I supposed to find ANYTHING!

Secretary Gaggle
No really, my new system is much better...

Mr. Boss Man
What about Mr. Mucker? You know he’s sending an important business letter.

Secretary Gaggle
I don’t think he sent anything. Let me check his file. (She finds an envelope) Oh. Yeah, I guess he did. Here’s the whole file on him - I’m absolutely sure you’ll probably need to see everything he’s ever written to you... There... See? I can help you search for anything you ask me about. Sometimes I amaze myself how totally efficient I am. I’m so quick I filed all the mail before anyone even had to bother reading it!! Everything is great!!

Mr. Boss Man
Can you please just find everything that came in the mail today and give it to me? I ONLY WANT THE STUFF FROM TODAY!!!!

Secretary Gaggle
No! My mind doesn’t work like that. You need to jog my memory with keywords or something. Then maybe I can try to pull the related files. I hope I sorted it all correctly – I’m sure I did. Anyways, if we miss a few letters, I’m sure it’ll be alright.

Mr. Boss Man
You’re FIRED!

Mr. Boss Man was unable to find a couple very important letters which happened to come in the mail that day. One very timely letter sat in the filing cabinet until well after the court proceedings. Luckily, Mr. Boss Man only lost his business and his home. It’s too bad Secretary Gaggle was so incompetent but Mr. Boss Man will just have to deal with it. That’s life.

-------

The craziest part is that this is basically a true story – FOR EVERYONE WHO USES G-MAIL!!!

I still simply do not comprehend HOW Google can not see how OBVIOUS this problem really is. I mean this is a major issue that anyone from any perspective can easily see that GOOGLE IS IN THE WRONG HERE. Sorting mail by date is an ESSENTIAL FEATURE of a MAIL PROGRAM. I really don’t understand how anyone can even bother defending Google in this... I mean – yeah, they have “Search” – but so what?? Search is not SORT as the above dialogue expresses. Threaded conversations is a nice feature – for a very specific function only. IT SHOULD BE OPTIONAL!

I guess the really upsetting part is not so much that Google is clearly incompetent. Everyone make mistakes. It’s that when I search online about this topic, I find plenty of threads with LOTS of people all bitterly complaining that this is a problem. So Google KNOWS this is a major problem and refuses to fix it. The question is why? Why be EVIL? Power trip? They honestly think they are correct and only allowing threaded conversations will teach us all the errors of our ways? What’s the deal? It’s been years and this hasn’t been fixed... Why?

I never understood why people do evil things. The one satisfying bit to all of this is that eventually – at some point in the future, UNTHREADED SORT BY DATE will – I repeat – WILL be added into G-mail. Why do I say this? Because it is OBVIOUS. Anyone with half a brain can see that humans communicate FIRST in TIME and only then by SUBJECT. Think about that. It’s a fundamental aspect of the laws of physics of the universe. And Google is perverting those laws and trying to bend them to their will. But it can’t last forever and therefore I can safely predict this will change to reflect the way nature fundamentally works.

I can only hope someone at Google can read this and the feature will be added sooner than later. The longer they refuse to address such a fundamental flaw just shows how stubborn and arrogant they really are. And once this problem is finally fixed, the world will be ever so slightly better for a few hundred million people.

By the way, if anyone wants to make the above joke dialogue into a fun filled YouTube Video, it’s the kind of inside joke that might get some hits and push this thing forward a bit more.

And when I say Google is Evil – well – I realize they aren’t really as bad as the Monsanto’s of the world. But why do they refuse to listen to anyone or actually many many people as the case may be?? Actions by large powerful corporations are clearly very mysterious... or nefarious...

enrico said, on September 7, 2009 9:03 AM:

i would like to ad my voice to those on here who detest gmail grouping/threading.

i can see what they have tried to accomplish. unfortunately, the results are in mind less than satisfying.

it's a mess and for too many reasons. Sometimes people write but do not bother to change the subject line and their mail gets included with a conversation where it doesn't belong, and if within that thread there is a lot activity it won't stand out.

furthermore, i want to be able to delete most of the mail whilst at the same time keep my sent one. with the grouping/threading system that doesn't seem to be possible. if A writes to me and i answer back, if i delete A's message i will delete my answer with it..

and the list goes on and on.

i'm seriously reconsidering my choice of moving away from yahoo something which i did only because they had announced the sale to microsoft.

Sasha said, on September 10, 2009 12:12 AM:

Sorry Dave, but you really dropped the ball on this one.

Sure, conversations are great, wonderful even. In general, I really like the feature. But not for everyone, all the time.

I run an online store, which gets a lot of email. Generally, I tell if I replied to a message by looking for the (2) next to it.

Except sometimes, it groups totally unrelated conversations together into one conversation. So it will say (2), and it's not Bob and Sasha's reply - But rather Bob and Jon. Thinking someone else at the shop answered it, I skip over it. Oops. Now both Bob and Jon are pissed off because they never got an answer.

Why in the high hell does it group together unrelated conversations? What do I do if I want to unlink them? There's simply no way. The conversations with Bob and Jon will simply be stuck to each other in a goopy ball for good. Useless.

No option to disable it. No option to unlink individual emails from conversation threads. No good, Google.

I am incredibly upset at my decision to base my business on Gmail right now. I've given it months, but it just doesn't work for my needs.

I think that Gmail was premature in leaving "Beta" status...

Sasha

T Man said, on September 10, 2009 7:56 PM:

I would like to agree with the masses here and let Dave know that he is completely wrong on this one. Does he work for Google or something? Even if you PERSONALLY like this feature, it is abundently clear that MANY MANY MANY people HATE it, so why not just offer the option to turn it off? - simple. Add me to the list of people who left gmail for this reason alone. So annoying!

Dave Taylor said, on September 10, 2009 10:17 PM:

Holy moly, I leave this thread alone for a while and it garners a ton of hostile and critical comments! Though I initially said that I thought people who didn't like the Gmail threading feature should just "give it time" and "get used to it", I will now say that it's clear there are lots and lots of people who have a stronger negative reaction to it and that it is absolutely in Google's best interest for them to change message threading to a user option.

charles nelson reilly said, on September 15, 2009 5:49 PM:

This "feature" makes me lose e-mails! Why can't they make it an option? If it's so good, why are they afraid to allow people to turn it off?

Angie said, on September 16, 2009 8:21 AM:

Another user here thinking of switching back to Yahoo after using G-mail for a couple of months. How I hate that threading feature.

HateGmail said, on September 19, 2009 10:58 AM:

I just notified my entire address book that I was switching to gmail :( Unfortunately I did not realize how annoying this feature is. Even more annoying is the google attitude - it boggles my mind that there is no way to disable this feature

Faith Cronin said, on September 20, 2009 7:15 AM:

I just became a Gmail fan until I started consolidating other email accounts into the new gmail account. I have already lost track of so many of the emails because many of them happen to have the same subject line. This is absolutely ridiculous. What is so difficult about making this threading garbage optional? Now I'm going to have to take all the emails I had just switched over and put them into yet another Yahoo account because I am leaving Gmail. This feature is the most annoying thing I have ever encountered in my 13 years of having email accounts.

And this Dave guy can criticize whomever he likes about people not being intelligent enough to appreciate this nonsense. He needs to realize that there are many people out there that simply don't want their emails organized that way. It has nothing to do with comprehension. I understand it perfectly, but I HATE it. I don't want emails (that are totally unrelated) from several different people clumped together simply because they have the same subject line.

Deb said, on September 23, 2009 4:23 AM:

This past summer I was away from home and unable to get my Comcast mail through the firewall where I was staying. So I set up a gmail account and forwarded all of my other mail accounts there. At first glance I was impressed with the great SPAM filtering and the ability to tag and create labels and filters -- very robust features for an online mail client.

But after about 4 months, I've decided to ditch the gmail because I simply cannot get used to the threading. It is the most annoying, counter-intuitive mail organization scheme I've ever encountered -- and I even subscribe to several newsgroups where conversation threading is standard, but what works for one purpose, definitely does not work for another, in my opinion.

I constantly miss messages and reply incorrectly. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to include only the most current message out of a thread with my reply -- it seems to be include the whole dang thread or nothing at all, which is insane -- when forwarding I often do not care for the person I am forwarding to to see the entire conversation I had with the message sender before the part I want to share. Not to mention, when sending replies to group messages, including the whole thread is a PIA and clutters other people's inboxes with unnecessary crap they've already read, but yet replying without reference of the message you are replying to often does not provide needed information. Wading through threads on a hand-held mail reader (i.e. Blackberry) to find the "new" pieces is complicated and time-consuming, especially if there are multiple people involved in the conversation and there have been several replies. How silly and inefficient when people are continually bouncing the same multi-page message thread back and forth just to add a one-sentence reply.

As previously stated, not having the ability to look through my mail chronologically is madness and has cost me countless hours trying to track down something I remembered receiving in June, but is actually buried with the August email because of an after-thought comment /reply somebody sent months after the original email.

It is not a matter of intelligence or comprehension, rather organization. Different people process and organize in different ways (and from the sounds of this thread -- a good many people do not subscribe to Google's method of organization). What a shame that there is no choice to turn this "feature" on or off in this otherwise very functional online email client.

Rodrigo Feed said, on October 6, 2009 11:51 AM:

This is a good feature for reading mail, but it is just terrible in a work environment. You just get lost all the time because Gmail keeps hiding people's names. I'm trying to get used to it but I might as well enable IMAP and download my messages to Microsoft Outlook just to get rid of this feature.

I don't see what would be the problem to just make it an option, so you can freely choose how you want to view your e-mail: like everyone else, or like Google wants.

Bill Ford said, on October 12, 2009 9:01 AM:

Gmail was so highly recommended to me, but I am abandoning it because of this lame "conversation" feature.

Case in point: I sent an important proposal to the head of the large company I work for. Got a response from him, which I forwarded to another party who was helping me with the proposal. He replied back, and suddenly his reply is an immutable part of this email thread. Why does Gmail insist on daisy chaining these emails together? We could not figure out how to separate the forward/reply from the original email, so we had to abandon the email and start with a fresh one.

I was appalled by this -- I can't believe Gmail thinks this is desirable. I've mentioned it to many Gmail enthusiasts, whose response was that you can bypass that feature through preferences, but I certainly can't find a way to do it. Life's too short -- I'm moving on.

Gmail SUCKS. Back to Yahoo for me.

tbb said, on October 15, 2009 1:24 PM:

Yeah, I don't see how it benefits google in any way not to just give the OPTION to turn this off. Even have it be on by default and the switch to turn it off hidden away someplace no one would ever find by accident and with a bunch of "are you sure?" "really?" "REEEEEEEEEALLY?" "Okay but don't blame us if you regret it, okay?" confirmation prompts.

It's not like it will harm people who like "conversations" if other people have a chance to turn it off, why not allow it and please everyone?

Dave said, on October 19, 2009 2:48 AM:

I have to agree 100% that this "feature" really should be optional. If there's this level of annoyance at it, it doesn't say much for Google's flexibility that this much frustration over this length of time has done nothing to persuade them. And to have the option to just sort all emails chronologically (perhaps from one contact - using labels?) is what I really need, and don't have. Gmail mixes up the order due to correspondents not always replying to your latest email. The really stupid thing is that surely what people here are asking for is actually the no-brainer, hardly any progamming required option - I can't see any way that this would be difficult to implement! They just can't be bothered...
I've resorted to using IMAP and Thunderbird to see all correspondence to and from one email address, in date order. At least now it's possible for me!

Daphne said, on October 28, 2009 5:59 AM:

We've just gone over to gmail at work, with no option to use a local client: it's webmail or nothing. Not being able to turn off threading is The. Most. Annoying. Thing. Ever. "Get used to it" is not an appropriate response.

I had a gmail account way back in the day of invite-only betas. I abandoned it very quickly because I couldn't get on with threading. It's great for some people and there are many good things about the Google way of doing things. Not offering a simple on/off button for a very idiosyncratic way of viewing and managing email seems like an oversight at best and a postively arrogant disregard for how individuals might prefer to handle their information at worst.

I hope someone at Google is actually paying attention to this thread and asking the dev team to implement it. As more businesses go over to this for work and people like me don't have a choice, it's going to become more of an issue.

Paul said, on October 28, 2009 6:02 AM:

Well, three years on and Google still haven't 'got it', have they?
If I hadn't already got such inertia with my gmail account (replacing my aol one), I'd switch to something else, simply due to the inablity to turn the feature off.
Has Google become too big and lost its agility? Or is it just indifferent?

Jink said, on October 28, 2009 3:53 PM:

This will not be a popular response but...

A very many of these negative "conversation\threading" comments are simply from people who have not invested enough time to learn how to use GMail properly. And "enough time" really isn't very long. GMail is very powerful and I, for the most part, LOVE conversation threading - it sure beats having to search around for all the friggin' emails that have anything to do with the one I'm reading!

1. You CAN delete individual emails from a conversation. Learn how!
2. Emails are threaded by SUBJECT as well, not just sender\recipient replies. You can easily reply with a new subject to break the conversation if you like. Learn how!
3. Learn how to use labels and the built in "Search". Very powerful and very fast.

and more... some of the Labs are awesome!

Spend a few minutes to learn the tool your using and you will appreciate it ALOT more.

Still - google should add a non-conversation option for the "corner" cases (PEBCAK and real).

nigel bra... said, on November 1, 2009 5:15 AM:

WOW so many people that really do not like the google threading. I thought I was in a significant minority and was living with it, then it annoyed me enough to try to switch to a conventional view and found this.
Clearly unless there is a true marketing reason, google will in time give us what we want (but they do not want too much complexity in their offer - it hits quality - just look at the other extreme M$).
Until then we have to use POP/IMAP on a client machine or POP/IMAP/Forwarding to another mail account - why not Yahoo! - ive not tried it.

sqpantz said, on November 2, 2009 6:21 PM:

+1 on threading hate.

3 years worth of complaints ignored tells me this is probably never going to be changed.

Herb said, on November 3, 2009 1:55 PM:

I have been enduring the conversation thing for over 2 years now and I still hate it.

Once i was looking for an important email that I had read earlier that day and had a little banter back and forth with the sender then i had a devil of a time finding that important email message. I searched high and deep and finally found it (the search was NO help) then i navigated away from it for a while then i needed it again and once again and had a devil of a time again -repeat 2 more times whatta pain! (search was NO help yet i was able to find it when i went on a personal search and destroy mission - "clearing my desk of all my other work and concentrating on" finding that email.

A possible workaround...
I've had to do workarounds by adding lables to auto label stuff and starring stuff that i cant affort to lose such that the "filers" on the menu on the left can be of some use.

Kevin said, on November 3, 2009 6:39 PM:

I've been using Gmail for many years and this conversation feature is just horrible in my opinion. I'm just not getting used to it, no matter how much some people here think I should. It just doesn't work for me. I really like the spam filtering but this conversation filter is forcing me to look for alternatives.

It's really frustrating when I'm sending emails to multiple recipients. It's difficult for me to find the right version of the email that I want to forward to someone else. Or managing BCC recipients becomes almost impossible. This feature has caused me to send emails to people I don't intend.

Dan N said, on November 8, 2009 1:50 PM:

"A very many of these negative "conversation\threading" comments are simply from people who have not invested enough time to learn how to use GMail properly."

Er... Properly? As decreed by who? I use gmail because of the free IMAP access, so usually manage my emails in Thunderbird on a number of machines. If I wanted to sort them differently (e.g. by sender, subject, etc.) I would, and occasionally do when it suits my needs. However, most of the time I like my messages to be listed in chronological order.

On the occasions when I do use the web-based version I want the same layout as I'm used to in my client program.

I don't buy the argument that threading is the main attraction of gmail. When gmail first came out its primary attraction was the huge amount of storage space, and the extra features, that it offered for free. My main reason for switching to gmail a few years ago was the free pop3 access, which cost extra at Yahoo. Conversation threading is a relatively minor irritation for me, but only because I don't use the web-based version unless I absolutely have to.

This is a shame because google is trying so hard to promote "cloud computing", but this is really the only factor that discourages me from ditching my client program in favour of the web-based interface, now that computers are almost permanently online.

Joseph said, on November 12, 2009 1:20 PM:

This mail threading feature sucks...navigating through all the muck

Trudi said, on November 13, 2009 2:12 PM:

People have been complaining about this feature for years on many, many different blogs and discussion boards (over 800 in Google help forums alone). Obviously Google is not going to do anything about it so we have three choices
1. put up with it
2. quit gmail
3. rally together and kick Google's arrogant ass.

I'm all for the 3rd option myself!

julie said, on November 18, 2009 5:36 PM:

I absolutely HATE it HATE it HAAAAAATE it!

I'm ready to kick the arrogant ass, as you say. I can't ever find a previous email, things get lost for days because people just reply to old subject lines - who knows where the thing you're looking for ended up. Wouldn't it have been nice to make this optional so the people who like it can keep it and the people who HATE it can get rid of it. My boss wants to put our whole organization on gmail and I refuse to adapt.

Stuart said, on November 23, 2009 3:33 PM:

What a pain, to have such a useless and at least in my case non-functioning "feature" without an off switch. Deleting now and moving elsewhere.

pappa maria said, on November 25, 2009 12:38 AM:

Is there a way to deactivate the log in gmail activity??

Gee said, on November 25, 2009 7:28 PM:

So Dave's response to a user wanting to switch off an annoying feature is basically "I like the feature, so why don't you?"?

This feature is riddiculously annoying and clunky. I sent out a group email advising my entire contact list of my new google email address. People responded and I responded to their responses. This stupid feature groups not all the conversations in one thread! I could understand threading between two people but I have several names I need to click through in order to read and reply to an individual person!

It's a silly annoying feature. And one that needs an opt out function.

olavi ivask said, on November 30, 2009 7:45 AM:

This is very annoyng feature, this should be optional.

Anybody knows, why google doesn't want to change e-mail threading optional?

D.D said, on December 3, 2009 10:22 AM:

I can't believe Google still hasn't turned off or made optional this feature (this thread began in 2007!!). Their Gmail interface is better than everyone elses at most things yet this is automated threading is prone to errors and makes the entire Gmail thing unreliable for personal use and downright dangerous for business use.
Is there a petition to make this feature optional? It's not like it would be too difficult

hans said, on December 4, 2009 3:09 AM:

I agree with all above critics of 'tread'. Conversations does not work, or else I have to conclude that friends and collaborators (including myself) are stupid and unable to learn this 'wonderful' feature... There are mistakes made in communications that NEVER happens with other email programs. When there are misunderstandings, it is always with a gmail-contact. Browsing through the list of above messages gives me the feeling that we/I am screaming in empty space. And there is no one out there from google that hear us. Probably Google just 'tread' us as junk mail.

sprinko said, on December 4, 2009 6:59 AM:

Despise it. Have given it 6 months and still despise it.

Good idea with the petition above. Hope others join.

Perhaps a Facebook group might rally a bit more exposure and support? Anyone?

Leslie said, on December 5, 2009 2:08 PM:

I despise the conversation threading feature and realize I have to drop gmail. I'm tired of writing people and asking them to resend emails with information I need because I cannot find their originals emails hidden in some converstaion. It's annoying and frustrating.

teodule said, on December 7, 2009 7:03 AM:

OK folks, agreed a controversial feature which cannot be disabled is crap. But remember Gmail is free of charge so that the unsatisfied users could go and search for a better world somewhere else !
BTW a problem that (I believe) no one pointed out: threaded conversations ***might*** block POP3 access.I repeatedly experience problems as soon as the thread includes more than say 10 conversation: then my mail client is stuck with the message "getting message list". The workaround is deleting recent messages to trash and incorporate them back **one by one** into the inbox basket until you find the faulty thread !!!

Joe said, on December 8, 2009 7:26 AM:

I have a question. Doesn't the threaded conversation feature make labels pointless?

I like to have a folder/lable for each of my friends. When I receive a new e-mail from a friend, I reply, then move his or her e-mail into his or her folder.

With Google, when I have a threaded conversation as follows: Bob, Jill, Steve, Been, Me (23) there seems to be now way to get the e-mails in that threaded conversation into their own folder/label.
I am forced to label the entire threaded conversation when in reality I would like to label Bob's e-mail as Bob, Jills e-mail as Jill, and so on...

Unless I'm just missing something?

Summer said, on December 11, 2009 3:18 PM:

UGH, my CSU has switched our entire email system over to an offical Gmail system (with my school's logo on it and everything) and I just loathe it.

I wish all of the potential names I want for an e-mail address weren't already taken on Yahoo; otherwise I'd have swapped out of my AOL account by now! (I know, I'm the last person under 40 to still use AOL - I KNOW!)

I think a Facebook group would be a great stepping stone towards convincing Gmail to make threading optional. I have a personal Gmail account as well, and I love it minus the freaking conversation feature that only serves to annoy me.

eric said, on December 14, 2009 9:17 PM:

Ya, this "feature" would be nice if it was from only one person. But when writing on a blog with several people responding it's hard to search through this a stack of 30 to see which one I didn't respond to. I need to view these on my iphone so I can see each one by itself quickly.

Beats said, on December 18, 2009 4:30 PM:

IT sucks. I want it OFF i can't follow responses. Utter trash. I'm furious and may switch back to SBC's horrible spam box.

Adam said, on December 23, 2009 3:30 AM:

My employer switched to GMail a few weeks ago and we all hate the conversations feature. Probably useful for a private user, but not for serious corporate use. Too many missed messages, utter confusion.

Astonishing that here we are like THREE YEARS after people started moaning at Google about this and they are still acting like mules on this subject. I am going to have to start calling them Goog$e.

Fabien said, on December 30, 2009 3:53 AM:

I'm really surprised how many people hate that feature. The conversation feature is the only reason why I used GMail in the first place, I never used a webmail interface before (I hate webmails, and yet I switched to GMail for its webmail!). I use GMail mostly private but I used it for some time for professional issues as well and I never had any problem with it (never missed an email or so: wenn a conversation has several new messages, the unread messages are all opened when you enter the conversation, while the read ones are closed).

The worst that happened: a message sometimes got attached to the wrong conversation, that's a little annoying, but it's very rare.

tass said, on January 7, 2010 2:34 AM:

I hate the conversation threading...they are trying to be too clever by half. I see it all the time in IT, but to see Google stuff up something as simple as email, bloody annoying!!!

glenn berry said, on January 8, 2010 10:50 AM:

I tried using gmail for over 2 years and I hated the threading (conversations) feature. I stopped using gmail for this reason. This is too bad as I loved their contacts and calendar, but I don't want to use gmail for those services and another site for email, so I use Yahoo for everything.

Yahoo isn't nearly as good for contacts and calendars but they have a logical and usable email. If Google should decide to provide a turn off the conversations option I would be back to their service in a heart beat. Apparently, hundreds or thousands of people feel the same way I do from the messages I have read on many discussion groups.

I tried to provide feedback directly to Google but I couldn't find a way to contact them outside of some pre-designed comments that I was allowed to send through gmail. Perhaps they have gotten too big and arrogant now. I remember when the Wordperfect company did the same thing. It is not smart way to do business in the long run.

I think Google was just trying to be better and different with conversations and they either still believe this is better or they are just to arrogant to admit their mistake.

Lois said, on January 10, 2010 7:35 AM:

My employer has just switched to Google - I am having such a difficult time adjusting to Google in many aspects after using Outlook for 10 years- however threading is the most difficult. It decreases my productivity and I'm missing things. very confusing to have 13 replies come in on one thread, plus my replies. after 3 weeks, I'm ready to scream out of frustration. I agree that it should be an option and would like be able to turn off threading and end the nightmare.

Svafa said, on January 14, 2010 8:17 AM:

Personally, I think the conversation threading is a great feature...

for private use.

But, from a corporate side it's horrible. We recently switched to using the corporate gmail product (i.e. gmail product but not gmail address). And as one of the web admins, we've run into a number of issues with this conversation threading. The worst being that almost all auto-generated emails from our website are placed into the same conversation. In order to prevent this we're having to include a timestamp in the subject line, which still doesn't work perfectly. Otherwise we'd have thousands of emails in one conversation with a few dozen to a hundred added daily.

The ability to switch this feature off and view them all separately would be a godsend. Granted, we have our workaround... but that was put in place after the conversion, so all the emails integrated from the old account are stuck as one lump (some 4000+). :/

On the plus side, at least we still use outlook for business/office transactions. I can't imagine how horrible it would become if we had this conversation threading in our general work emails. It's bad enough I can get a few hundred new emails a day, if they were being added to old "conversations" it would be a nightmare. Especially considering it is common practice to reply to an old message with a new subject/issue. >.<

Harps said, on January 15, 2010 8:34 AM:

4 Years on and this is still an issue ....

I have no problem with them leaving it as threading by default - but not giving the option to go back to "normal" use (when the code is so trivial) smacks of nannyish "we know better" mentality.

Its a total deal breaker cannot in good conscience recommend this to any customer.

Model T Ford ... Available in any colour you want .... as long as its black :|

James B said, on January 15, 2010 6:33 PM:

Please add me to the 'I Hate Gmail's Conversation Feature' list. It's not a problem for an email with a few replies from the same person, but when others reply or there are many, many replies, it's pure horror. Time for an alternative.

Noddy Gooo said, on January 27, 2010 11:26 AM:

I just switched to gmail and I have to say I really hate this message threading. Messages get lost this way and are hard to view individually. Getting used to it is not an acceptable answer. People like choice, not to be forced to do something. Looks like my search for a suitable e-mail goes on.

greg said, on January 29, 2010 5:31 PM:

for what it's worth, also detest threaded conversations.
i grasp the whole concept (i'm an engineer), but it is frustrating to work with.
sometimes i send a conversation to my work outlook mail, purge, sort and format the 'conversation' then sent back to gmail.
very cumbersome.

immy said, on January 30, 2010 9:09 PM:

i just made a big mistake, and made my boss switch to gmail for his business emails. NOw im having trouble with my orders!!! when ive processed an order, and i get a new one, its mixing them up. HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ONE IS NEW?????????

IF I ARCHIVE IT, IT STILL GROUPS IT!! JUST THE SUBJECT IS THE SAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS. ARGHHHHHHH

Luke R said, on January 31, 2010 4:56 PM:

When I first started using Gmail, I thought this
feature was great, and to a large degree I still
do, however...

I think that Google should definitely give you
the option to either delete it (judging by most
of these comments) or choose which conversation
threads the messages go to (similar to labels).

The ability to drag and drop, and separate
messages from their conversations would be
excellent. I had this issue this morning from
two different people and somehow ended up in the
same thread.

An alternative for those who like the advantage
of Gmails spam filters, but can't stand the
threading, could be to check your Gmail through
IMAP. Just a thought.

P.S. Remember that services like Gmail are free.
I think too many people expect too much from a
free product.

RMK said, on February 1, 2010 10:52 AM:

I work at a university and we recently switched to Gmail. I would say this is the number one complaint about Gmail. Many people HATE the threads!!!! We get asked all the time if there is a way to turn them off. I just found this site trying once again to see if there was something new out there that would enable us to turn threading off, because someone asked us about it again.

Google, get a clue and listen to your users. Just because you love it, doesn't mean it is good for everyone. I personally hate trying to find a small part of some email that is BURIED in a threaded conversation. If I searched in my old email for specific words, I only had to look through maybe a couple short emails to find what I was looking for.

hategmail said, on February 2, 2010 2:08 PM:

Absolutely hate it....hate it. Behind the scenes it's all the same since you can use use a client (Outlook/Thunderbird or whatever)and get it in the "normal" format then why can't this be a frikkin OPTION.......folks who like it - keep it. Folks who don't - ditch it.

Brian H. said, on February 3, 2010 12:25 PM:

I don't use this word often, but this feature "SUCKS!"

I think I've finally made up my mind to use Yahoo or Ymail from now on.

kevin said, on February 3, 2010 3:54 PM:

To summarise the view of the vast majority.. it is dangerous. (People are losing and missing emails, unable to find mails, sending mails inadvertantly to the wrong people). It affects productivity, it is against common sense. People are offended by the lack of a choice, and by the lack of response from Google. Some of the responses from people who happen to be content with the feature (eg the offensive reference to PEBCAK) are not satisfying or persuading anyone.

Tom Trisk said, on February 7, 2010 1:26 AM:

Threading sucks and Dave is wacked to think it is "so darn useful"... obviously not to everyone and that includes me. If a person likes it cool good for them but for those of who do not we should have the ability to turn it off, what a pain in the ass. Someone is lazy and responds to a message I sent a month ago, rather then enter in my address and now it gets grouped together with a discussion that is no longer taking place sucks ding dong big time.

mickey said, on February 11, 2010 9:46 AM:

I love the threading - sort of - the only part I hate about it is the fact that emails with the same subject line get grouped together, no matter who they're from. The conversations - love that. The weird grouping of similar subject lines from different emails sent out - hate.

Sean McBride said, on February 16, 2010 3:44 PM:

I find it mind-boggling that Google hasn't yet responded to the near universal detestation for the enforced threading feature in Gmail. It's the only reason that I continue to use Yahoo Mail over Gmail. What's up with this situation?

richard tessier said, on February 16, 2010 6:49 PM:

HI,
I'm not against gmail grouping conversations per se, but how do I prevent gmail from sending out the WHOLE tread when I want to reply to one particular message within the thread?
sangatsu

Why did you say that? said, on February 19, 2010 8:37 PM:

Huh?

Why would anyone want to "get used" to such a horrible "feature" that doesn't even thread things accurately?!

It is the lack of accuracy and FORCED inaccurate threading that makes this "feature" totally suck.

There is no such thing as "get used" to it.

Matt Booty said, on February 22, 2010 5:03 PM:

Threading is fine for organizing a running conversation. But I just sent out an email with the subject line "NDA" to company A, and then it saved it with an old thread from several days ago that also had the subject line "NDA" but was for company B. Does google really think that I will only ever send ONE SINGLE EMAIL EVER with the subject line "NDA"? At least can you give me a way to detach an email from a running thread?

Justus Thane said, on February 28, 2010 9:43 PM:

Add my name to the list of people who love Gmail's message threading.

Will R said, on March 4, 2010 10:07 AM:

HATE IT! I've been trying to keep an open mind, but after 2 months i'm still missing emails. It's even worse on the BB plug-in. PS: Google is not free, you're reading ads for which they are paid billions of dollars. More gmail subscribers = more eyeballs = more dollars. They should be listening, it's not a charity.

Betsy R said, on March 5, 2010 7:52 PM:

I ACTUALLY HAVE A SOLUTION IF ANYONE WANTS TO GIVE IT A TRY: (Gmail now supports IMAP)

It's not perfect, but better than the stupid threading. I've got no problem with some people finding the threading feature useful. But why not be able to turn it on or off like most e-mail software lets you do? Why not give people the choice? I read somewhere that there's a technical reason for this - something about how Gmail sorts your mail using a search feature rather than a list feature. I only have a vague understanding of what they're talking about, but the take home message was that it's not like Google can just add an option to view without threading. They'd have to make some serious change to the program. Then again, they're freakin' Google, so I'm sure they could figure it out.

Here's what I'm doing - it seems to work so far: You can now access your Gmail via several e-mail applications that use IMAP and POP. I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird which is Mozilla's free e-mail program. Supposedly you can do this using Outlook and a few other programs, but I haven’t tried it. Someone wrote above that the interface with Outlook is kind of hinky and annoying.

Please note - this only resolves Gmail’s annoying issues if you use the same computer(s) to access your email, since you need to have Thunderbird installed on your computer and you have to set it up for your Gmail account.

It's actually pretty easy if you go through the Thunderbird setup wizard. I thought it would be more complicated. I'm already very familiar with Thunderbird (formerly known as the E-mail component of the Mozilla Suite), so that works well for me. One thing to remember is that it’s better (in my opinion) to use the IMAP setting rather than the POP setting. But Gmail's help articles explain all that...

Here’s more info on "other ways to access Gmail":
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12769
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12806

Info on Gmail with Thunderbird:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78892
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77662

Thunderbird FAQs: http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/faq

Here’s an article on using Thunderbird for Gmail, and a bit more about setting it up. Please note - keep in mind it’s an older article for an earlier version of Thunderbird so some things may have changed a bit:
http://lifehacker.com/314574/turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client

If anyone else is using Thunderbird and/or other e-mail software to access Gmail, what do you think of it? Better yet, maybe a new page on this topic of which e-mail applications are good/bad with the Gmail interface?

Betsy R said, on March 5, 2010 8:28 PM:

ANOTHER NOTE - The only thing that I thought was disaster at first (but I figured out how to fix it) was that when you first install Thunderbird and set it up for your Gmail, the "folders" window is kind of funny. The left-hand side of the reading pane has multiple folders, like you’d expect. But the folder that appears at the top, called "Inbox", has two copies of every message! I found more information on this and how to fix it, sort of. (I think the info was on Google’s help pages, but I can't find the link right now, but will update if I find it again):

It turns out that you will see this problem when you’re in the "Smart Folders" view (see details below). With the Smart Folders view, if you have more than one e-mail address set up within Thunderbird, you can see a compilation of all the messages in all your inboxes, all inside a main “Inbox” Smart Folder. But when you use an IMAP interface between your e-mail program and Gmail, something happens that that tags each message once for your Gmail folder and once for your main "Inbox", or something like that. So when you click on your main Inbox in the "Smart Folders" view, you'll see multiple copies of each message from your Gmail account. You can’t really fix this, but you can “hide” it. I might have gotten some of that technical , and don’t see the logic of this double-tagging function. But here's a solution that worked for me:

After you install and set up Thunderbird for your e-mail, you’ll see the left side of the reading pane with your list of folders. The default setting is for the "Smart Folders" view (which I call the Stupid Folders view). To confirm this, at the top of that left-hand reading pane, if it says Smart Folders then your in the Stupid Folders view :). Next to that you'll see a pair of left/right arrow toggle buttons. Toggle one click to the right, to the "All Folders" setting, and you'll see the folders appearing the way you would normally expect in Thunderbird (or Outlook, etc.). The main “Inbox” Smart Folder that had multiple copies of everything is no longer visible in the All Folders view. Instead, you see an Inbox listed under your Gmail account name. So far it’s work okay for me in the All Folders view.

You might have to tweak things a bit more to suit your purposes. For example I like to be able to see the column for File Size (refer to Thunderbird’s help section), but I could never figure out if/how this could be done in Gmail itself. You can hide certain columns you don’t care about, and you can re-size the column widths, which Gmail itself can’t do. And you can drag and drop on the name of each column heading to change the order of the column fields. A lot of this stuff can be found in Thunderbird’s help sections.

Incidentally, someone said they found a Google suggestion page:
https://services.google.com/inquiry/gmail_suggest/
But when I clicked on the all I get is the mail Google page (I even Googled for the link, and found it, and clicked on it from the Google search results, and the same thing happened.

Do you think Google doesn’t want our suggestions anymore? :(
(or maybe the link is just temporarily broken)

jamie said, on March 11, 2010 12:38 PM:

i HATE the threading. its making me want to go back to hotmail.

imnotrich said, on March 15, 2010 1:27 PM:

Threading might be useful,if it CORRECTLY identified related conversations, but it does not. Mail from different people about different topics get grouped together inappropriately. Mails get lost. Deadlines misse. There is no notification of a new incoming mail, if it google incorrectly thinks it belongs in an already existing thread.
No, give us the option to turn conversations off. It sucks.

Kim said, on March 15, 2010 2:17 PM:

UGH. Add me to the list of HATE it. Just signed up for gmail today and was so looking forward to it.

I sent one test email to two friends (we talk back and forth in email all day) and 15 minutes later I was completely lost in the thread (why on earth do I want to see what I sent them?) and accidentally deleted everything because I just wanted to delete a single email. (yes I figured out how to recover it)

This is a FEATURE? I don't think so. Back to Outlook for me.

whatisimmunocal said, on March 19, 2010 1:43 PM:

80/20 rule. 80% of the time it's great. The other 20% of the time it sucks.

Michael Scheper said, on March 21, 2010 11:38 AM:

Yes, this feature is nice for ordinary conversations, but it's a nightmare for tracking system status messages. I can't tell from looking at the index whether a 'PROBLEM' has been resolved, because the corresponding 'OK' message is lumped in a separate thread ('conversation' in Googlespeak) with all the other problems. This just won't do, so I'm switching back to a real mail client until Google adds the ability to turn this 'feature' off.

imap said, on March 22, 2010 10:26 AM:

I agree, there should be an option to turn it off.

For now I'm just going to IMAP it via Outlook when I need to track e-mail message by date. A shame Google doesn't listen to users more. Turning into Microsoft.

david said, on March 23, 2010 4:43 PM:

These conversations are the reason |I am looking to move away from gmail. on a one-reply conversation they are tolerable, but any more than that and the situation is totally unbearable! Have a look at gmx - that seems a good alternative (but I don't think it's as fast - try it and see what you think)

Saud said, on March 25, 2010 3:31 AM:

I have appreciated the idea of conversations being grouped together. However, until recently, I needed to sort my email chronologically and view what mail i got and when. Cuz of threads/conversations feature, if the first mail of the conversation was sent on day 1, the the latest mail on the same conversation was sent on day 10, the sort feature showed me that mail at DAY 10 rather than day 1. that is problematic. PLEASE RESOLVE this issue.

Rick said, on March 25, 2010 9:15 AM:

Now that we have moved our company email to Gmail I am constantly bombarded with requests to fix/ turn off this feature. It is absolutely useless in our organization and works against us. We have informed our CIO that the fix is to go back to Exchange until this horrible "feature" can be turned off.

dave said, on March 31, 2010 5:07 AM:

there used to be the option of switching it off, now google have withdrawn it.

all we would like it the CHOICE to do so.

still, on balance gmail rocks.

Alex Walsh said, on April 12, 2010 3:12 PM:

When Microsoft stopped listening to customers, they started producing operating systems like ME and Vista and products like the Zune. Remember the "Mojave experiment" adds from Microsoft? That was a "you'll learn to like it mentality." Look what happened to Vista. Recently, Google jumped on the bad product bandwagon with the Wave. Add gmail 'conversations' to this list.

For business users who send different categories of emails to many of the same small groups, this feature is insane. Maybe if I was a 20-something with nothing to do except text and play online games, it would be fine. But for productive people, this 'feature' hurts the brain.

Gmail has screwed up Reply to All emails (which can be dangerous) for me in the past, but this is the last straw. Like another person said, why not make it something that can disabled? And what about sorting? Give users features - don't force them to think like Google does. A

If Google wanted to help, they would understand that the number of emails is rising and the use of attachments is increasing. That should be a clue to someone about how to more forward (and not with the Wave). Attachments were a bit of an add-on to standard email in the beginning, but now they are the primary purpose for many emails. And you can't handle a large number of incoming emails by limiting the number that can be displayed on a single page and forcing uses to go through multiple pages. I don't want to have to search my emails or set filters every single time I open my account. I need to see my unread emails and deal with the highest priority items first.

Google - don't go the way of Microsoft and pigheadedly start making bad products. Listen to your users.

cengiz said, on April 14, 2010 3:54 PM:

This (so called) conversation grouping is the worst feature I've seen since Vista's Windows Explorer.
Probably the same guys from Vista Team added this to Gmail.

Cujo said, on April 16, 2010 8:38 AM:

conversation threading ,, so thats what the dam thing is called ,, hate it too ,, someone should code up a gadget or plugin or something to get rid of it ,, drives me nuts lol

David said, on April 16, 2010 9:11 AM:

Very disappointed to learn you can't turn it off. My ISP has recently moved to google for mail so the webmail client has changed for the simple and clean interface they used before to the mess that is gmail. Ugh!

Vlad said, on April 16, 2010 11:01 AM:

I'm a software developer and using Gmail for more than two years.

This email threading "feature" absolutely sucks. I constantly miss emails because the "feature" makes it hard to keep track of new emails.

In a corporate environment an email message equals an task. Unread emails represent "to do". If I can't mark mails individualy as read/unread (or archive them individually) inside a conversation, I can't keep track of which emails I handled, and which emails still need to be answered/handled.

Now what happens, I have a thread with 10 old emails and 5 new emails. If I enter the thread, the new mails are expanded. If I don't have time to read all the 5 new emails, and I click on inbox to see another email, gmail marks the entire thread as read, and if I enter the thread again later, all the mails are collapsed, and I have no way to know what mails I read and what mails I didn't read last time I entered the thread. THAT IS "TEH SUCK" (tm).

Also, if I want to count how many individual mails about some subject I received in one week, I can't, because they are grouped with emails from other weeks.

This makes it very easy to miss an important task. The only workaround for this ugly shit is to use IMAP and a different client.

This is a bug, not a feature, and needs to be made optional.

Google are starting to behave the same as Apple: we know what's good for you, even if you don't like it.

They need to understand that many of their users are not children, and can decide for themselfs what is good for them.

And finally, I HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT :)

Mr Mr Man said, on April 17, 2010 10:35 PM: