In Gmail what does the following mean in the Inbox:
Dave,me(2)
Where can I change the setting?
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.
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.
Ciao! I need dependable proxy service. Please prompt me.
DIANA! You’re such a love! Thank you.
So glad to know how to turn it off. I never used gmail site and forwarded all to other site up to today because of this “conversation view.” Thank you for the info, Diana.
It is so totally different from threading done in Web sites and just extremely inconvenient/impossible to force people to re-use the title all the time.
I found this, is this what you are tryig to do?
Gmail groups all replies with their original message, creating a single conversation or thread. If you’d like, you can change this setting so that replies aren’t threaded into conversations, but appear as individual messages in your inbox. To do so, go to the General tab of your Gmail Settings, and select the radio button next to ‘Conversation view off’.
WOW. You are WONDERFUL. I’m an Outlook user and have been trying to configure Gmail to eliminate the thread / conversation view for over a year. THANK YOU SO MUCH
That’s a great article. The email threading was really getting me nuts. Thank you.
Hi Everyone,
I found a way to turn this feature off so that it doesn’t group your conversations.
1. Click on the ‘settings’ button in gmail on the top right hand corner of the screen
2. Select ‘settings’ and then under the general tab select the button next to ‘Conversation view off’
This worked for me!
I read and re-read the quoted passage, Cath, and I don’t see that it’s condescending at all. I constantly try out new things, beta operating systems, unreleased software, etc. There’s always a tension between new and different and the old, classic way of doing things. That’s what I was trying to get at with my comment. Sorry you read it as condescending. Btw, you can turn off threading.
It is useful if there are only two persons involved in a “conversation”, but if there are more people taking part, and you are exchanging a lot of e-mails, you soon lose track of the new ones, and you can hardly find the end in order to be able to choose what to reply to. So I totally agree that it should be optional to have it or not, and just because something is new it does not always mean that the developers have thought of everything and that it is better.
“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.”
This sentence is almost as annoying as the gmail “conversations” format. Instead of assuming most people dislike the “conversations” format of gmail because they haven’t “used it” or gotten “comfortable” with it and assuming a condescending attitude be aware that a lot of people have “used it” and didn’t find it elegant or useful but rather annoying, non user-friendly, and definitely not useful.
Hello,
have you tried this? Settings–>Conversation view off. That should help and solved my problems.
Regards,
Sedam Bisera
I can hardly believe there is no way to turn threading off. The threading is a frustrating and maddening non-option.
I suppose if you only deal with one issue for days at a time…. or only get 2-3 emails a day it can work BUT it buries valuable emails when they arrive days after a thread starts and under a deluge of other email. And…. when you locate the thread, the essential email is often hidden with a little “expand” button as the only clue to its whereabouts.
Now Google is behaving just like every other monolith (eg. Microsoft, Apple, et al, in deciding what users need and then providing no option.
BY THE WAY – thanks for the patronizing lesson in how threading works and your $0.02 and a pat on the head saying we should really get used to it.
Horrible! The feature made me miss some emails from important contacts. I cannot find enough negative adjectives. Actually the thread sometimes hides important responses and gives importance to some responses in a thread, which is downright weird. The priority logic is arbitrary and erratic, not easily understood. Should give the Google inventor of this thread idea an anti-nobel prize for negative contribution to web technology.
Started with G-mail 2 months ago..BIG mistake.
Rather than letting me do what I want, it takes it own actions..which is very, very confusing.
Labels are not as intuitive as one thinks. Then the threading is ridiculous. Can’t find content of an old E-mail without wading through tons. If one finds it, can’t delete any of the unneeded threads without deleting the whole. Add to that if someone send you even a one word answer to an old E-mail ie “great” it pulls the old e-mail out of the folder and when you delete “great” you’ve deleter your important (previously in your folder E-mail).
If I can’t sort this out soon, have to find a different E-mail system
Great post! I love to read this kind of stuff!
Thanks!
Marco
So sick of being told to get used to whatever change some IT guy decided is best. New options are awesome , but let me decide and personalize the services I invest in my using as my primary email address.
I loathe the new gmail. It’s ugly, hard to use and feels like I am being slammed against a wall to use email the way Google wants me to, NOT the way I prefer. Make all these unattractive “offerings” OPTIONAL. Do NOT push them at us or we will just move away. At least I will. The conversational “thread” is ridiculous. Maybe we don’t want all the records Google wants us to have or have our own way of keeping track, not Google’s way. Make it and all the other junk optional. So you designers can play with it. I want to return to the original design — at least the one pre-this one. I agree with just about all the comments above.
I have given gmail a lot of time to get use to this “threading” or “conversation” style of email–3 years–and I still dislike it. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with it at work. I WISH GOOGLE WOULD LISTEN TO ITS USERS AND ALLOW A DIFFERENT STYLE. CHOICE WOULD BE GREAT.
I like the threading feature, for the most part. What I do not like is that if I save that email to a folder and later someone responds to it, then it pulls it from the folder. If I delete the response email then all the emails are trashed, even the ones in the saved folders. I don’t want my folder emails to be trashed because I trashed a response to it.
I also lost a lot of stuff in my folders when I permanently deleted my SENT and TRASH emails. After awhile I noticed that I was losing my emails from the folders too as I was simultaneously deleting the SENT and TRASH emails, and I could not get them back. Arrrggggg!
Any way to avoid this?
Also, I don’t care for the new format. Everything is so faded it is hard to tell where one email ends and another begins. Hard to find things. I don’t like it at all!!
Mea culpa. Fixed.
Dave, as this is probably the most visited article on the web about this topic, why don’t you just update your original post to say that Conversation View can be switched off and save a lot of people some headaches?
“one of the more desireable features of Google’s Gmail service”? Seriously?? This feature is doing my head in! It’s the one thing that’s stopping me from using gmail as my main email and believe me, I have tried to get used to it, I’ve been trying for months. It’s no good.
Many thanks to Mandi for the link showing how to turn the stupid feature off, shame it’s no longer possible to search by subject, good job there are only 3 emails in my inbox (and not likely to multiply either). Bah!
I dislike the threading feature and searching for a solution brought me here.
Save a message to a folder then clean your sent mail folder. Hmm, now all of my saved messages are gone as well.
Has anyone found a way to turn off threading on the gmail iphone or android phone apps? I could really use it…
while it’s nice that gmail have finally made it easy to turn off ‘conversation view’, it’s pretty useless (to me) without the ability to sort by subject. has anyone found a way to do that?
thanks,
sneeds
Apologies to Dave on the post above. The language was not intended to be directed at you.
I simply don’t believe gmail to be manageable and personally I am unable to get used to it. Maybe for a lot of people this is a good solution.
My company will be changing providers shortly I believe.
This “feature” is an absolute disaster. I have to send the same emails to multiple suppliers however the suppliers definitely should not know about one another.
I now have 10 different suppliers all in the same email and I can’t separate the group. Coupled with that they all respond differently and I have no idea what the heck, who sent what when how – god help me what a mess.
If I respond to the wrong supplier and send it to the wrong person it could be my job. Top that off with it being a nightmare to see where in the chain the internal correspondence has to be cut out and it’s just unmanageable. What a complete and utter disaster!!!
yes – Now I have to reinvent subject lines 50 times that all should be the same thing and really, should I have to or should I be able to just write an email like … every other email account on the planet??
PS: I have been using it for six months, every day as my work email. I am not used to it and it doesn’t fricken work!!!
PPS: I can’t use POP or IMAP as China has blocked these features from working correctly. Throw a 20MB file at it and everything stops.
PPPS: I use a variety of software from Office, Windows, Linux, Mac and don’t really mind too much as they all seem to do the same thing to me. If I can send emails, do a doc and some excel I am good.
Its JUST Gmail Web interface! It is the ONLY thing that really just stuffs everything up.
Don’t tell me to get used to this s&#t. It doesn’t work. END
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=5900
It’s very easy to turn it off. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner. Go to email settings. Go to conversations and click the unlink button.
Thanks, Nice job dpmol & Google… http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/turn-off-gmails-conversation-view.html is the solution. I assume it was added and was not there all along.
HaHaHa…http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/turn-off-gmails-conversation-view.html showed me how to turn it off…very easy!
Sorry, Andrew, I found the switch but it does not work for me. Emails are still grouped.
I am quitting Gmail because of the threads…it is so cumbersome and ridiculous. I’m not a baby for gods sake.
Another thread hater here. If I want to prevent other people from seeing the previous conversation, I have to start a whole new “thread”. PITA!! I wish there was a way to hit a button and disconnect the previous conversations in the thread before forwarding or responding to a new person in the chain. Maybe there is one and I’m too dumb to figure it out.
Good lord people, go to settings and turn it off conversations if you don’t like it. As for me, I can’t use email without it at this point. When I get a new email, I’d rather the entire conversation float to the top along with that new email so I can reference what we were emailing about in the first place. Having one stand-alone email come in, and then digging back into history to find the rest of the story is what would be maddening to me. And I’m not alone as I’m sure you’ve noticed Apple, Microsoft, and even Facebook using the threading/conversation view.
But maybe you still like your email to be disjointed and piecemeal like you’re on Hotmail in 1999, so either turn off conversations in settings or chose an antiquated email product and stop whining.
I’m with those against this ridiculous, confusing threading. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But like everything else people hate about gmail (lack of a sort function, lack of folders, etc.), Google refuses to listen, fix, or give choices to their customers. I’m off to finally drop-kick gmail out of my life.
Gmail now gives the option to separate the conversations/threads having same subject.
Go to Options then Mail Settings then in General tab, find and check the option “Conversation view off”.
Regards
You can actually turn this feature off. While it is helpful for some uses of email, if you are collecting comments for getting responses from emails sent with the same headline it can really be maddening. Here is how to turn the feature off – http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=5900
I HATE THIS FEATURE! I want to switch it off!
Problem or Question
Cannot find email messages in the Gmail view. The message I want is inside of another email message, making it confusing.
Environment
Gmail
Solution or Answer
Turn Conversations Off.
1. Log into Gmail.
2. Click on Settings in the upper right corner.
3. Under “Conversation View,” select (check mark) [x] “Conversation view off.”
4. Click Save.
For more information, see http://mail.google.com/support/?hl=en
Cause
Gmail uses a feature called “conversations” which groups or embeds email messages that are in a chain. In this view, one message contains the entire conversation or activity of a message that is replied to or forwarded. This is different from the standard Outlook view where each individual email message is displayed independent of any related activity.
Many people may like the conversational mode. I do not. Gmail offers a switch to turn it off but, as of today (11/13/2020) the switch has no effect for my gmail. To break a thread, I have to keep changing the subject line. This was not always the case. I fear it is just another instance of the programmers in charge of telling the users, “We think this is neat. Use it.”
Have you tried disabling “conversation view” in settings, then logging out and logging back into Gmail, Kearney?
For Blackberry users, I have found the following workaround for manual gmail configuration on your BB that has eliminated the Enhanced Gmail Plug-in and therefore Conversation Mode:
http://johndlloyd.com/page/2
Thanks John!
Another vote for HATE THIS FEATURE! I have quite a bit of trouble finding specific emails I’ve sent, or just reviewing the most recent sent because they are buried in long threads often with multiple topics.
Thanks Andrew! That should work. All in all, I would like to add (not sure if anyone else has mentioned this), since Google provides the email service for business use as well, grouping is a headache for business users (yeah its free for upto 10 users provided you have your own domain). A business user may provide its customers a “Quote” for their product/services and imagine what would happen if a wrong email is sent to the incorrect customer! The business would bust!…….
Not sure if you have discovered the answer, but there is a setting to switch this frustrating behaviour off.
In settings, Conversation View: select off.
Wow. Thanks for NOT answering the question and telling people that they are too stupid to know what they want. The koolaid is strong in that one. The listening? not so much.
I do NOT want my emails threaded. All I want is a damn timeline. Nothing sucks more than missing an important email because gmail outsmarts me. Tacking it to the end of a thread as reply #13, rather that showing it as unread on a timeline, does NOT add value.