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In Google's Gmail, how do I email an individual on a list?

I often have long, complicated mail threads in my Google Gmail account and get frustrated when I want to respond to the person sending a particular message, but not the rest of the people on the list. Is there some snazzy shortcut for doing just that?


Dave's Answer:

Thank you for not saying that you hate Gmail's threading feature! If you read the comments attached to my article Can I disable Gmail threading? you'll see that people are quite surprisingly passionate about this subject.

As I have said before, however, a bit of poking around reveals how you can sidestep the problem and learn to tolerate, if not actually love, the threading capability to organize your mailbox. Maybe. :-)

In your case, you are correct that clicking on "Reply" will not work because just about all modern mailing lists are set up so that replies go to the list, not the sender. Plenty of people have been embarrassed after accidentally sending personal messages to a large list because they forgot that, but we won't go there, nor will I talk about the times I have done that myself!

Instead, when you have a specific sender to whom you want to send a message that's part of a thread, float your cursor over their name, as shown here:

Google Gmail: Hover over a sender and information is shown

It isn't completely obvious, but if you now move your cursor over the little "Email" tab and click, you'll get a new message composition window with their email address - not the address of the list - already filled out:

Google Gmail: Composition Window with address pre-filled

That's the trick. Not so tough, is it? ;-) Note that some people will only have an "Email" tab while others will have a "Chat" tab and still others will have an "Invite to Chat" tab. As I said earlier, experiment, click around, and see what other means you can use to communicate with your colleagues or friends.

Thanks to blogger Dennis McDonald for allowing me to use him as an example.


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Categorized: Google Gmail Help   (Article 7830, Written by )
Tagged: gchat, gmail, google mail, im
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Reader Comments To Date: 2

cytosue said, on November 25, 2009 4:07 PM:

good job Dave, but I still hate the "threading".
But now I understand.

Greg said, on January 14, 2010 10:36 AM:

Hi - great info! There are times when I'd like to switch-off those pop-ups when I hover over the Sender name in an e-mail - is there any way to prevent them from popping-up?

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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