Why can't I turn off conversation threading in gmail; it's fatal for my business!

It's true, there are numerous contexts where threading is a hindrance not a help. Since emails that share the same subject line are grouped, it is far too easy to miss messages that are unrelated.

For instance, there have been times in the past when I've sent many customers an update message or have used the same subject line generically ("Hello from Thor!"). Every reply becomes part of the thread even though the subject matter ranges all over the place. Visually it is a lot easier to miss messages when they're buried in a busy thread. I have often missed important messages because of this.

In short, it would be nice to be able to turn off threading. But what Adam says is true, we can always work around the feature by using a desktop (or mobile) client that doesn't maintain the threading. The IMAP feature is awesome from what I've seen.

Why not assign a SID when communicating with a client!

Adam, I would say it would be useful to get Gmail to work as a CRM SID as an optional functionaality by user request.

This will be a great contribution to bring Gmail as a business solution.

So maybe a check box when replying an email with two selective options to process by topic or by sid.

It would be extremly easy to implement without major modifications of the platform. Just set a limit of carachters to thread a topic and the sid becomes the topic!

"Visually it is a lot easier to miss messages when they're buried in a busy thread. I have often missed important messages because of this..."

I'm afraid I just learned that I missed several important emails over the past three days. I am new to Gmail, and I'm surprised that we can't view messages in a more traditional format.

I would prefer not to use another email client, as I use several different machines throughout the day here at the high school where I work, many of which do not allow downloading and installation of email clients due to network restrictions designed to thwart student-initiated damage.

Am I missing something obvious within Gmail that would alert me that a new response has been received in an existing conversation? I only found the missed responses by clicking into each one of my previously read messages and looking for new responses.

I've had this happen numerous times, though I've definitely become sensitized over the years to the interface cues. Basically when there's a new response the thread jumps to the top of your inbox and regains its bold "unread" status. If it's a long thread the previous messages will be collapsed so that the most recent message isn't pushed down too far, but otherwise you do need to scroll down.

I've found this problem is the worst when there are a tremendous number of replies, and the replies have little to do with each other. It's also a problem when the subject line is generic.

I'm so new to Gmail, that I hadn't quite registered the visual cues (boldface, etc.) Thank you for the tip.

I was bewildered to discover that one of my "missed" responses was actually three separate replies to my one original message. In my previous email environments, these three separate replies would appear as three separate messages at the top of my Inbox. Not so in Gmail, I guess.

Thank you again.

I've had this problem too. I used the account for conference registration and we just lost track of what messages we received or moved on to another account. For some reason I never found out, one submission didn't show up at all, although we found it afterwards when searching for the name. We missed 2-3 submissions because of the thread system, and had to do extend the review process with 2 weeks. I think the conversation system only works for very specific contexts, and it should not be the only interface or even the default one.

I've got this problem as well!

Why can't I just choose "unthread conversation" as an option in Gmail? Now I gotta install ANOTHER client on my PC, JUST so I don't have to have email threads? Ugh!

Gmail does SO much, how difficult would it be for the developers to enable users to "turn off" this feature, as opposed to driving us to add MORE software to our already bloated PC's? (Which I cannot do at my job, since I'm not allowed to install software on their machines.) I thought that Google was all about web functionality???

Conversation threading is an essential feature of Gmail, and most of the time I love it.

The one time it's completely unworkable is when I want to delete / label specific messages within a thread. Since I like to populate my to-do list from Gmail tags, it's helpful to see the specific email with action item tagged, rather than the entire conversation thread.

I just don't understand why Google has to be such a Nazi about it. Is it their way or the highway? I too have lost emails because of this. I have been to their headquarters. Maybe because it looks like they are all treated like little children with primary colors and lets decorate our desks...etc. that the engineers feel the need to treat us as children. What is with this "how does it make you feel?" what am I 6 years old?

I have had enough of Google mail, this forced conversation thread thing has driven me to Yahoo!, and it looks fantastic! I dont know why I did not do it sooner, perhaps because google is my default search engine, but now I will move mail completely to Yahoo and use googlemail as a backup.

Try Yahoo, it works as I would want/expect.

Cheers,
Mark.

I agree Mark. I started the thread about this problem but I finally snapped and went to Yahoo also. Yahoo is far superior for this reason alone but I also like their folder system. Whew.

If you want speed and searchability then Gmail is far superior. The fast, comprehensive search mostly makes folders/labels unnecessary for my fast-paced life. I know many people like the Outlook foldered approach, which Yahoo Mail emulates well, but I do love my Gmail.

This converstation threading is absolutely diabolical. I live in constant fear of replying to the wrong people, missing a response to an email (as it lumps 200 responses from 1 group email into the same thread), missing a hardware failure notification etc.
I find it totally unmanageable, even after 6 months of persevering with it. The old standard interface is 1 million times better for me.

Hi Cupcake, yeah, its awful, so change to Yahoo Mail, I did and get my gmail forwarded there. It has folders, filters etc... Ive changed to Yahoo Mail pro, only $20 a year and worth it...

Yes, I have had it with google threading. It makes you miss emails. Reply to the wrong people. I have waited paitently for google to make it an option (2 years!). It is obvious that they think it is a plus. Most people don't know how to complain about it!

I get complaints everyday, and there is always astonishment when I have to say there is no-way to disable the feature.

Onward to test Yahoo.
rlt.
comeandget.us

Sometimes, I just need to exchange a piece of information with a colleague for a later date/time.

Perhaps I'm just not with it...
I don't need every single message to become an episode in a soap opera.

Perhaps they should rename it D-mail for "Drama"

Like so many I also feel that the compulsory conversation threading is more of a headache than a blessing. Perhaps if it could optionally be used on a per-subject basis or something along those lines it might be helpful on occasion. The only other option from the GMail side of things is to use the GMail filtering or "tagging" feature. However this still needs much development as it is largely unsatisfactory in it's functionality. The best option that I have found at this point is to use a third-party email program such as Outlook or Thunderbird. I had abandoned Thunderbird awhile back, but recently revisited Thunderbird when I was looking at paying another hundred-something-dollars for outlook when I bought a new computer. Thunderbird has come a long way in it's functionality and at this point I don't think I will have to look at a different email program ever again. Anywho ... back to the subject at hand. Utilizing a third-party email program to access GMail gives you maximum control over your email and bypasses the compulsory GMail conversation threading.

I just deleted an important thread by mistake due to the threading.

I am reminded of the CorelDraw clipart manual.

One year there must have been an ideologue of some sort in charge of the CorelDraw clipart manual. The previous year's manuals had pictures to represent the topics of different sections of the clipart, along with words for the topics in English, French, German and a few other languages. On the year of the pigheaded designer, the text was removed, leaving only pictures to find the topics with, to make it more politically correct by not picking 5 or 6 out of all the languages in the world to include and thereby excluding all the rest. This of course made it much harder to find topics.

The next version's manual reverted to the old, far superior topic headings with both pictures and words in multiple languages. The pigheaded decision was overturned in favor of giving users what they want and need.

I suspect that in order for Google to overturn it's pigheaded "threaded only" decision will require the person responsible for the error to quit, get fired, die, or otherwise leave their job and get replaced by someone who wants to give users what they report they want and need.

The reason google search works so well is that it give people what they want. Why cant they do the same with email? Do they have a We can do no wrong attitude?

If they did a simple survey, they would find enough people want this feature in addition to a sort by date, time or sender. Geez, yahoo has that. So does it make any sense that yahoo mail is so much more popular?

Wake up please.

I am so relieved to find this thread - I feel like I've reached a support group! I live in San Francisco and met a gmail developer through friends. I asked him how to turn of the conversation feature and he flashed - he went into a tirade and actually referred to me as a "stupid outlook user".
I had switched to gmail a few months ago when I left my isp and got an iphone all around the same time. I have my own domain, so I figured I'd just route everything through gmail and pick it up through Mac Mail at home or iphone clients. It worked beautifully! Trouble is, when I'm away from my client and want to access my mail through a bigger screen than my iphone, I'm stuck with the gmail format. I had no idea I could not shut off the conversation feature, now I feel married to it. It looked like such a good idea at the time. I've lost or missed communcations as described above, but also lose temporal context in the email string: If someone sends a separate message on the same topic but with a different subject line, say we're planning a get-together, I have to go into that conversation and the other conversation(s) and try to stitch together who said what when in response to whom. It's diabolical. It's inane. I mean, how hard is it to sort by subject?? If that's what I wanted, I'd do it. Google: Turn it off. how integral can it possibly be? If my mail client can to it, so can you.

I feel the same way as most of you do. I thought that Google was about letting you do things your way - oh wait, that is Burger King.
It is frustrating that such a good company has decided that this feature is better than what I do now and has decided to force me to use it. I sent them a suggestion to allow the option to turn it off - through the comment link in the reply, and I referenced this thread. I hope that it does some good.

I did try to get used to the threaded conversation feature, but after a couple of years I keep having problems with this feature, which just recently resulted in sending a wrong message to the wrong people a couple of times.
I wonder why Google is taking an arrogant and non user friendly approach on this!

The IMAP suggestion is not solving my problem because of firewall limitations, so this forces me to abandon GMAIL.

Metoometoometoo. I set up my Gmail account with an invite as soon as they launched it. I use it for backup of data and as a test email account. I've been waiting to make the switch until they provide unthreading, for all the reasons listed above. But I lost hope a long time ago. Google has too much power now to really pay attention to user needs. Power corrupts. Too bad!

Like many others, I'd appreciate the option to turn OFF conversation threads. I like web based e-mail access, and G-Mail's integration with Blackberry, but the threads are a nuisance.

I signed up at Zenbe.com, which provide POP3 access to my gmail from anywhere via the web, without having to install any software, and allows me to see the maill by order received. Zenbe also let's you access facebook and other such things, has a calendar-todo-list application, etc.

Do you know of something web based like Zenbe that uses IMAP?

Zenbe says IMAP support will arrive sometime.

I can't really tell when using it for my somewhat limited purposes what difference it would make for it to be using IMAP instead of pop.

I've tried using gmail. It's faster than yahoo and has some great features. I love a lot about google in general ie. gmaps etc.. I retried it again starting a month ago. I just missed yet another email in "pile" in the inbox.

But it's waaaaayyy to easy to miss an email visually. The bottom line is that all of the arguments for gmail or any of it's features don't mean very much when you've missed the original email due to threading feature.

I understand why or how a company could develop something like gmail and not foresee how a feature would affect people. What's annoying is how many people hate this feature (there are reams of complaints on the net) and gmail continues to ignore it.

I don't know about anyone else but many, maybe most of my emails, consist of a message and a reply or two. I certainly don't want every conversation with someone "linked"!

I've used Yahoo mail for years. It's not perfect and isn't as "techy" as gmail. On the other hand, it works just fine w/o installing IMAP or anything else.....

Why fight it?

GMail is a great service and has made my life a whole lot easier. But as a developer myself i must say that not having the ability to unthread is a big hassle. Especially for my bug reports, which customers always label the same...
Also gmail easily thinks of unrelated mails with similar titles as one conversation, when in fact its more... This is a big problem.

Thanks you !

I personally don't have a problem with it. However, I think they should listen others do.

What are the free alternatives to Gmail that don't have hideous moving ads and massive spam and a terrible spam filter like for example Yahoo mail does?

RE: Suezanne Baskerville's comment.
Honestly, why not just go to yahoo mail? I know it's slower at times but what's worse, losing emails entirely or having a couple of ads on the page? If it's that important, you could probably just pay the $20/yr to dump the ads?

I've found a good alternative to gmail. You can try it out in gmx.com. It has free IMAP, POP3 access just like gmail, but without the threaded webmail interface.

GMX has ads with pictures in the emails, right? I couldn't tell from looking if it has video ads or still images. Gmail's text ads off to the side aren't too annoying to me.

Yahoo's spam filter sucks.

Does GMX allow you to see a threaded view when you want?

True threads are made from replies to replies to replies, not just matching subjects

I'd like to see the incoming mail by order received or order sent, as I choose, and then for any particular message, have a option to see the thread the message is in, in forward or reverse sequence.

SuezanneC Baskerville said:

Yahoo's spam filter sucks.

FYI. I don't know if you email a lot more than I do but I've never had trouble with more than an occasional spam email using the free version. The paid version includes an additonal 35 filters.....

Best wishes.

I am sure thousands of users just give up on gmail because of the threading "feature". I expect I will. It's jaw-dropping arrogance by G to ignore the requirement to have a normal inbox.

This thread will go down in the annals of Internet history as one which displays that Google DO NOT LISTEN TO USERS. With great power comes great arrogance, they are rapidly becoming the new Microsoft and underestimating the importance of the user community, as an Information Architect myself I can confidently say that the 'conversation view' has more holes than Swiss cheese and is fundamentally flawed. Google cannot change the habits I have built up using email since before they decided to exist, and it is pompous to think otherwise.

I have moved to yahoo.
not as fast, but it behaves as I would like an email programme to behave WRT NOT threading messages.
Poor show Google. Take your collective heads out of your behinds!

I also hate this feature. I have commented numerous times on Gmail's useless help site, and get no response. I have too many people who use my email address for me to dump gmail, but I am advising everyone I know to not get a gmail address. I stop strangers on the street just to tell them how bad gmail is. Well, not yet but I am thinkong about it.

Why is Google so arrogant about this?

I can only assume now that the reason for Google's resistance to repeated user requests for a conversation view off option is stubborn pride:

probably a view individuals there in the google tech dept who - as the creators of this "unique" feature - are loathe to back track in any way on "their baby" and feel that more time exposure will simply force "stubborn" users to "just get used to it" whereby eventually reducing the number of complaints. This apparent attitude smacks of immaturity.

Google shoudl not allow apparent personal emotion to override public service delivery - the fact is, a large proportion of users (current and potential) DO IN FACT experience difficulty in locating previously sent or received messages because conversation view hides them.

Surely Google realizes that it can attract more users - and keep them - by not continuing to ignore or play down complains in this regard?

I agree completely with Arthur,

Placing such a limitation without the option to have messages threaded or unthreaded way DOES seem like the stubbornness of some self-important Google wanker who is protecting HIS precious VISION (pleeeze, spare us your vision!!!) at the cost of an option that a lot of users are begging for.

Oh dear, will Android go the same way, or will Gmail start listening???

I suggest you all go over to Google and make a feature request, it may help, you never know, the squeaky wheel gets the oil you know!

http://services.google.com/feedback/g...

I'm not saying don't do it, but don't expect much by actually appealing to Google in a sensible way. I've posted over there as have many others.
| wouldn't waste too much time - Go post and then take a shot at Yahoo mail or something like it.

I HAVE THIS PROBLEM -
I just set up a Gmail account because STUPID MSN randomly blocked email to my girl's Hotmail for a few days recently...
so I sign up, thinking Gmail would be the coolest solution -
then I notice the STUPID permanent threaded discussion feature, my girl is complaining that she can't find stuff, and I spend FAR TOO MUCH time looking through the account/settings to find out how to turn the STUPID (to me) THREADING off. So here I am, wasting time, looking for another email solution. Sorry for yelling, but WHAT THE H***, Google? This is just silly.

What's ironic is that the Gmail message threading works at its absolute worst with Google Alerts. They are all clustered together as if they're a thread, when each one is an independent message. When you get hundreds of alerts a week for a single keyword search, it becomes nigh impossible to delete a single message, to find the most recent one, or to scroll through the long overlapped headers.

For its message threading, Google gets an F- for interface design and an F- for customer service. The failures of Google are many but never has one been so easy to fix.

can't someone build some kind of a greasemonkey thing to unthread the emails? Or, maybe we can ask the bettergmail FireFox extension people to do this?

I both love and hate the threading. It's useful for a helpdesk so other users of the account can quickly see what's been written before them, but on the other hand, when several msgs are replying to one mass mailing, all with a different problem, it becomes a nightmare to figure out who needs what remedy. Labels help, but we still risk replying to the wrong person and overlooking responses.

My solution has been to change the subject when I first reply to a message in this case. That breaks the thread.

I hope, though, that a future Gmail release will include the ability to break msgs out of a thread on a case-by-case basis.

I agree with a lot of people here, let me the user choose if I want threading or not. Please!!

I definitely miss the option to Regroup conversations at my convenience.

Most of the time Gmail conveniently groups the conversation in a useful way, but other times it groups stuff that it shouldn't, making it harder to find information inside the thread.

So here is my vote for a better conversation management.

I don't believe Google when they say most people love conversation view. They need a reason to justify their R&D costs, and instead of admitting the truth, they claim people love it. But conversation view is a "feature" users either love or hate, and I suspect you can find more people who dislike this feature than like it. And for every review that praises Gmail, you can find one that faults Gmail for this feature. Unfortunately Google is a stubborn company who refuses to offer an alternative.

I too find this frustrating. I use Google apps to host email for my business and personal domains, and also have a number of customers running on this system. The only downside to this fantastic product, reported to me by customers, is that the conversation view can be confusing.

The best thing we can do is tell Google by checking the 'Switch Conversation View on or off' option on their Gmail Feature Request page: https://services.google.com/inquiry/g...

They can make conversation view 100x better by simply hiding sent messages, so it only groups the incoming messages.

I to have lost emails because of the conversation view. Switched to accessing via Outlook and Thunderbird using pop3. IMAP would not let me exclude folders on gmail(eg I didnt want to sync the spam folder and even though it was told to exclude it gmail kept downloading material from the SPAM folder. At this point the webmail interface for Gmail is useless for me while conversation view cannot be turned off.

There is actually an option to exclude IMAP folders via Gmail settings. I haven't lost messages because of conversation view, but I don't like the Gmail decides how I'm supposed to read my messages. Seriously, who is Google to decide what messages belong together? It's fine if it takes an educated guess, but there must be a way to change this.

It's quite extraordinary that so many people are complaining for such a long time about this feature, while it would be the simplest thing to allow users to just turn it off. I simply love gmail: the most efficient and reliable spam-filter, enormous amounts of free storage, fantastic accessability. I simply don't understand why they keep butting their head against the wall about a simple thing like this, which is obviously a nuisance to a large amount of users.

This is the most commonly requested change to Gmail, so Google is aware of it. They haven't done anything about it because they want Gmail users to do things the way they dictate. One of my biggest complaints about conversation view is that Google decides which messages belong to a conversation, but don't provide a way to break a conversation or train Gmail if they get it wrong (I constantly get messages grouped together that shouldn't be).

I just have to chime in here... I really tried to stick with Gmail for the features that come for free (I've been a $20 a year paying yahoo mail plus user for years) but after a few months of missing important emails (that were stuck in the middle of some other thread like others here have said) and things being grouped that shouldn't be, I left Gmail and went running back to Yahoo, begging for forgiveness.

I would rather pay Yahoo $50 a year instead of being subjected to grouped conversations. The bottom line - this feature is severely broken and if you rely on email for your living, threaded conversations can cost you money if you miss emails or send some info to the wrong client. I am always afraid that I'm sending things to people that are not meant for their inbox since I can see the other emails when I'm forwarding or something. It's just impossible to get used to (for alot of us).

The main reason I pay money at all for email is that I handle multiple email accounts for business and personal emails and being able to send FROM these addresses in Yahoo Mail makes life a bit easier. Google offers this feature for free, but being tortured by grouped messages ISN'T WORTH IT!!!

Another thing that Yahoo does better is folders. Since I have work and personal email on the same page, in Yahoo I can just NOT look into my work folders if I don't want to see who's bugging me, in Gmail with labels, it's all right there in your inbox plain to see so your eye catches a work email at 10PM and the next thing you know, you're thinking about work (or even working)!!!

I'm amazed that Google hasn't put a button in the options saying "Disable Grouped Conversations" - we could have all avoided this waste of effort trying to convince Google to let us turn the darn thing off. WE WANT EMAIL TO BE LIKE IT'S ALWAYS BEEN.... one message for every email sent or received. No grouping. Period.

Remember that Google sells ads that are delivered to each user based on the content of the users' emails. Perhaps grouping messages together increases the value of these ads somehow. This would explain why our cries seem to be falling on deaf ears. Maybe disabling grouped messages would COST GOOGLE MONEY. Think about it.

I actually like Gmail's labels instead of traditional folders. The reality is that labels and folders do the same thing, they are just presented differently to the user. Instead of moving messages into folders, you just apply a label. Then you select the label instead of selecting a folder. The big advantage of labels is that you can apply more than one label to a message.

Labels are great, and it's a good thing you can have multiple labels because you can't just label one message... the whole thread of unrelated messages gets labeled too! Which just makes this whole problem of unwanted threading that much worse...

Again, it should be optional on a per message/thread basis.

That's another downfall of Gmail... You can't label individual messages inside a conversation, only the whole conversation. One of the underlying problems is that Gmail doesn't treat individual messages as individual messages.

I empathise and sympathise with Joe U. I am new to Google, I cannot load Hotmail into Outlook/Outlook Express to use off-line so I thought I would try Google. At first I was impressed but as the mails built up the randome threading drove me nuts - even these replies are not grouped! I too miss the folders I use in Hotmail, maybe Jay's way of working them is worth trying. The targetted adds also un-nerve me very much, though some of the associations are quite funny. The bottom line is that I will be dumping Google asap!
Frogman

Peter/Frogman, Microsoft stopped supporting Hotmail in Outlook Express at least a year ago. Regular Outlook shouldn't have a problem. Outlook Express has been replaced with the freely available Windows Live Mail (not to be confused with Windows Mail that's included with Vista). Windows Live Mail supports Hotmail and it functions beautifully -- also syncs with your Hotmail Calendar. Also free POP3 access is coming (to US users) this month.

Yesterday Google updated Gmail with a "Move To" menu option that basically makes labels function more like folders. They still haven't done anything about conversation view though. =(

The google conversation is basically broken. If you miss or lose emails then you have a bug, not a feature.

I have been investigating moving my company to gmail and google apps as we've had success with other on-line applications (CRM and accounting). But all our faxes come through email and guess what - gmail thinks this is a conversation. Other notifications are treated similarly and lost. I've pulled out of google apps and being a paid subscriber because of "conversations". They've lost my money and some of my respect.

Just found out about the Google Labs feature "Quick Links" which allows bookmarking the search "subset=all&within=1d&date=today". That helps some. Many of you probably already know about it,but just FYI!

has google explained their rationale for NOT providing the option? do they have a rationale? the putting forth of the workaround (going to IMAP on a desktop) seems like an acknowledgment of the issue. i'm just confused by lack of explanation and the simultaneous lack of interest in addressing it.

Sign the petition to make conversation grouping an option.

https://groups.google.com/group/Gmail...

Boy, some of you need to get a grip.

Why don't you just ask google for a refund? Oh yeah, gmail is FREE. Some of you act like you contracted a software developer who didn't deliver your personal specifications.

If you don't like the occasional threading of unrelated messages, or you're too dense to figure out what messages in a thread are unread, then sure, pay for yahoo and it's sluggish interface and crummy spam filters and slow search that almost makes Outlook's search seem fast by comparison. Maybe gmail is not for you. That's not necessarily gmail's fault or responsibility.

Google is a business. They may or may not be a lot of things, but they're certainly not stupid. If an unthreading option were easy to implement, surely it would have been done. It probably will be in the future. If a majority of users really didn't like it, it probably wouldn't exist.

I use gmail for one reason above all else. It's fast. The interface is fast, and the search is blazing fast. I used to have an elaborate system of Outlook folders, because lord knows you can't count on Outlook's search function. Even search add-ons like X1 didn't relieve the hassle of constantly manually indexing messages into folders. And as others have noted, Outlook, Yahoo etc don't let you associate a message with multiple folders.

Gmail solves more problems than it causes. How many of you spend half the day in meetings and come back to hundreds of unread messages? Isn't the threading feature useful in that case? Seeing the conversation at a glance makes life easier. What do you do on other email systems if you want to save all responses to a particular conversation? Drag all those responses into a folder? Gross.

If you really must break a particular message out of a thread, just forward the message to yourself, edit the subject, and cut the thread down to just what you need. I find myself needing to do this once or twice a week. I recover that time 100x over due to gmail's speed, excellent spam filters, and labels/archive feature.

It can't hurt to add your vote at https://groups.google.com/group/Gmail... as others have suggested. The idea that google doesn't listen to users is foolish. Google exists because they figured out the best way to give the most relevant information on demand.

I am surprised that the firefox developer community hasn't come up with an add-on to address this, but that in itself tells you that this is far from a trivial technical challenge.

While I like the feature, I'm not as radical: I would prefer to be able to rearrange the conversations my way.
Sometimes gmail splits conversations that I would prefer to be joined or joins messages that I rather handle seperated.

Quick comment to Yogi. You said "...They may or may not be a lot of things, but they're certainly not stupid. If an unthreading option were easy to implement, surely it would have been done...". This is not a difficult change to implement. Not threading is "normal" behavior for email servers and clients. And because Gmail's IMAP access is non-threaded, it tells me that conversation view is a client-side function. Changing the behavior in the client isn't rocket science, Google just has no desire to do this because they feel a need to make you do things their way.

Jay is right. Turning off threading is not difficult. Google just does not feel like doing it. And they feel that we have no choice but to use gmail only.

What a relief to find this thread. I am not mad - or at least not alone. I view my gmail account in Thunderbird - which was a workaround I employed when I first subscribed to Gmail and could not immediately see how to remove the "Conversation bug". But when I am not in the office I run the risk of missing vital emails etc and at last I have snapped and searched for the solution. I cannot believe that Google have not fixed this feature/bug and I guess I will now have to forward all my emails to Yahoo. Changing my email address is not really an option. But what a crazy world that Google should not have offered us a choice.

Yes, please add this "unthreading" feature into Gmail Labs....!

Come on Google... I see you're now changing how labels work...

This can't be THAT hard!

Why is this very obvious feature, to have messages displayed by date, not available???????????????????? Are you all crazy? And there is no appropriate answer from company's employees.

This solves the problem in the same way that if you bought a car without an engineyou could solve the lack of propulsion by towing it behind a car that DID have an engine. It is a cludge to fix a glaring fault in Gmail's otherwise exellent product. If you need webmail you have to forward your Gmails to an email service like Yahoo that CAN be srted properly. Why can't Google see that this is a BUG.

I hoped Gmail emerging from beta might include this... too bad....

Google doesn't listen to user feedback. They will likely never get rid of their beloved conversation view. Google feels compelled to be different, even when they know the conventional is better. Don't you see, Google is the only company on the planet who "gets it" when it comes to how email is "supposed" to work. Everyone else is wrong. I'm very concerned about their just announced OS -- apparently they've seen the light and now understand how an OS is "supposed" to work which means everything we've learned in the last few decades is wrong.

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!!!

Alright, rant over. I just though this would be fixed by now.

DON'T TRUST GOOGLE!
GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!
GOOGLE IS EVIL!!!

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

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.

DON'T TRUST GOOGLE!
GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!
GOOGLE IS EVIL!!!

Cupcake might as well be me. Normally, I've used my local pop3 client as a collector/aggregatpr of email from the many accounts I have to monitor for business. But recently I tried to use Gmail's online interface. I hate the fact that you can't change the tree-behavior.

I'm a programmer and it's absurd to not offer this basic and expected functionality. It's great if they want to offer other options -- but this whole "Do it OUR way -- you'll love it or else" mentality with an increasing number of Google products I try to use is really getting irritating.

My solution: back to the uninspiring but flexible Outlook Express and pop3.

It works the way I want it to. Funny, I never liked Outlook Express but every time I try to change, I always end back there.

How pathetic is that? Google? Are you listening?

Unwillingness to provide something as simple and desirable as the ability to see your mail sorted by date and time does not make the possibility of Google Chrome OS sound very inviting. Will we still be able to sort our folder and file lists the way we want - by name, date modified, size, type, etc., or will we only get to sort them the one way that Google thinks is ok?

The following story is somewhat true.

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...

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton

DON'T TRUST GOOGLE!
GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!
GOOGLE IS EVIL!!!

Hi,

I've read through this long and very interesting thread hoping to find some help. I like GMail with all its features, but agree that its threading feature might cause me to miss an email.

Considering that the threading feature is just there, is there a way to work with the threading feature *and* make sure that an email is not missed? Is there a way to use GMail's web interface such that an email will not be missed in a long thread?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Apparently, this Google forum doesn�t work that well when copying and pasting from Word. My last post had all kinds of messed up marks on it. Well. Here it is again cleaned up and copied from Notepad instead. I hope someone enjoys this little diatribe � it took a while to write...

RECOPIED AGAIN CLEAN FROM NOTEPAD:
----------------------------------------------------------

The following story is somewhat true.

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...

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.�
Lord Acton

DON'T TRUST GOOGLE!
GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!
GOOGLE IS EVIL!!!

I've created an easy to sign petition to fix this:

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions...

Yes very annoying....I don't want to delete my sent emails (I always want a record of every message I've sent), but it is pain to delete a message at a time in a thread of emails. Google is making things more comple by trying to make them simple.

Should definitely have an option to show in non-thread mode via the web as it does on iphone or via imap

I'm still amazed that we cannot turn off this feature. It is implemented poorly and causes more harm than good.

Wow, this is still not fixed? Did they at least provide a reason?
I'm not going to use gmail until I can choose how to display my messages.

It's not "broken". It works as designed. A really poor design.

I usually don't have too much trouble with the conversation grouping, though it has taken some getting used to. But how about when I have forwarded Dad's message to my husband, then received a private response re Dad's message from husband, and then want to respond privately to Dad?

If I look at the final message to Dad in Sent, it looks like Dad has to see husband's private message back to me. Does he see that? Or does it just seem that way? THAT'S what I find most disconcerting about Gmail.

Looks like Google should just fix the thing for people who do not want it!!! like me. I hate this problem and I will swich soon if Google don't make it a option!

Google probably won't invest any time fixing this since they are going to release Wave soon. It is supposed to revolutionize email as we know it.

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/abou...

I'm looking forward to it.

Great solution Gmail forced upon us, huh?

Just get Thunderbird, sorry you don't like the way gmail's conversation view works presently...

as if to say, oh, well, too bad, so sad, we don't care... we will keep it the way we like it...

When I send out an email to several people and 5 of those people respond to me, and i respond to them from their email...

Gmail is so privacy conscience, that they send each person the other emails in the conversation, which I can see in the email they send back to me... You can't stop that from happening... and several times it has caused major complications... people getting upset because of what they read, that I never intended to send them.

Thanks again Gmail...

For the longest time, I had switched to another email... but when I came back, I can see that they still have not fixed any of their problems, and are still putting the fixes off on their clients to figure out and deal with.

What if we do not want all the extra bulk of storing all of our emails on our laptops or office computers or desktops???

Thanks a lot geniuses.

Gmail is 100% frustrating.

Like so many others, this "feature" makes me lose e-mails. What would be the harm in letting us *choose* whether we have it? Gmail lets us choose so much else, how about letting us choose something fundamental to the activity?

This is a bit crazy I personally have no problem with it but my girlfriend and my parent both complained about this 'feature' they say they can't really understand who's sent what. My girlfriend even sent back to the horrible experience of hotmail because she couldn't get her head around this. Just a tick box to turn this feature on and off what make gmail so much better for noobz

I do hate this feature, because a couple of days ago I was on the phone with a client while looking at her emails (about six or seven in all) and I was talking about one of the earlier emails she sent me because the emails were out of order. By the time I realized I was responding to a previous question, she was already frustrated with me.
I like the conversation feature, but I wish it only grouped together ONE person (the other day I sent out an email to all 300 contacts in my contact list, and each and every email response back went into one mass conversation area) and the default was to have each "conversation" part underneath, like the way the comments are on here. I used to have Yahoo, I'm not used to gmail yet, but goodness can't you make it a little more like everyone else's, but with more features, so it's less confusing?

Sending a message to 300 contacts, only to have all replies considered one conversation is exactly what's wrong with their implementation of conversation view. It's unfortunate that Google doesn't listen to user feedback.

Conversation View ???? I hate this on Gmail !!! I want to turn this off, but i CAN NOOOOT.

Very close to dropping my Gmail account because of this - will see how Wave feels first but I really can't keep using gmail unless I can disable converstions when I need to.

Guys, I think Google ignores this thread. START ANOTHER ONE WITH EACH COMPLAINT ABOUT THIS... at least that way google might take a bit more notice.
It's insane google have done NOTHING to communicate to the hundreds who have expressed frustration over this for years.

I am going out to look for a better solution so I can get to mail when traveling, that is when I use Gmail the most (can not get any group mail though, as there is no way to use group mail with Gmail.

only useful at the moment as emergency mail.

I would use it more, even pay for it to ungroup and act like Outlook mail where you can have rules and each individual mail can be view and sorted through.

I love google search but as for gmail the people at google think our wants are not worthy of working on an alternative paid email site with the feather we would all love to have.

I am off to search for a better solution (no not hotmail though not even the paid one)

Louise

I for one would like a flexible interface where (here's just one example) I can display all the messages to and from a particular person that mention a particular set of search terms, shown in chronological order - and nothing else ! !

In other words, almost the exact interface we have now in gmail, but without Conversation View ! ! !

That could show a real-life conversation

(I say "almost" because I want to be able to say "To Henry" OR "from Henry". I can't do the OR right now.)

After I set up an account for my husband's business and he complained bitterly about not being able to keep track of orders etc with the inability to turn threading off I've switched to Yahoo. Ugh.

Add an option to turn threading off please!

Well I am watching a video by Google with their new Wave method of communicating and they seems to think emailing is old fashioned and after two years of complaining I doubt they will be changing the "conversation method of communicating.

I now forward my mail and will change the subject or put no subject when sending email or copy and paste when I reply and ask them to change the subject a little when they reply when I am stuck to use it when away. I also use it to send files or links to my laptop and store some files there. But will not use it as a regular mail client because of the threading problem (well the way I see it.

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/abou... it is long but you can get the gist of what they think is fantastic about conversations (personally I hate it) I would rather pick up the phone!!! but can see a use for it for a meeting or something if there is no other way to get people together as you can send files and such on the fly.

But have not finished watching it (project to finish tomorrow after I get the turkey in the oven.

Louise

I would pay $20 to someone if they could figure out a way to permanently turn off GMAIL 'conversations'. Sometimes I purposefully send a family member an extract from an email received, but if that framily member includes the original sender in a reply and the original sender replies to both of us.....then, whoops.....the family member I wrote, knows more than they should/needed to, because GMail sends back the entire "conversations' to the family member. In the future when replying, I will try adding symbols and/or numbers at the end of the subject line. Hopefully, that slight difference will cause the emails to not group.

This is my primary reason for finally moving away from gmail, as much as I like other things about the interface and functionality (i.e. love labels and the extent of filtering criteria).

While I can control what *I* send to people (i.e. cut and paste an excerpt from the original message into a new message, although rather a backward way to go about this), I have no control over what other people inadvertently pass on because of the gmail threading. On too many occasions having the entire conversation unknowingly passed around, especially as new recipients get added and side conversations develop, has created uncomfortable situations.

It is insane not offering the ability to turn off threading. Conversation threading is great for news groups and topical lists where posts are all on a common topic and messages are all meant to go to all members. It is simply not practical for email where messages are more often than not meant for individuals, not groups, and most people want the ability to discern who should or should not see pieces of conversations, not to mention, need the ability to label, store and delete messages individually.

I love threading most of the time. I hate searching around for the rest of the emails that would be part of the thread. But I can see those cases where it's not practical. Option would certainly be nice

This is the problem with "smart" tools. Most of the time they work great, but in those circumstances where they don't it really really stinks. And Google hasn't provided a way to make it dumb again so we have to choose between old school but reliable dumb email clients (Outlook) or unreliable but smart clients :(.

I feel your pain. Usually Apple's flaw is arrogance and Google's flaw is being TOO customer driven, but this time Google isn't responding to customers.

It's made all the worse by the behavior of not showing subject lines on replies.

My workaround is to revise the subject on many replies, this breaks the threading model.

Yup, that's one way. Perhaps that might be a somewhat easier solution for google to implement... Offer a togglable option on an email by email basis that would automatically prefix or append a chosen unique identifier to each related email (Date\Time | # etc).

Wykananda, that might work but it is a ridiculous solution

The correct and professional solution is for google to let us search and sort in any way that we want to

Not just sorting by subject ! ! !

I'm finally quitting GMail as its 'Conversation' piece is THE WORST piece of email functionality ever. I constantly lose emails as people reply to my replies. It's terrible. Everything else I like a lot but I spend a bunch of frustrating time looking for emails to no avail.

I'm going to GMX. All google needs to do is make it an option. If you like losing your email, keep it on, if you want email to work normally, turn it off.

Why won't they simply make it an option? Let the user choose. I don't know anyone who hasn't said they didn't lose some emails.

I'll come back if they make email work normally.

Screw Google and their lousy Gmail. My husband can't get rid of his Google Calendar messages despite deleting this "feature" (i.e. bug) a dozen times, and I hate hate hate the "conversations" threads. You have to be a total moron who does nothing but send personal emails all day long to like this feature.
I made the HUGE mistake of using gmail for my job search emails and predictably, it's a total chaotic mess. I'm ditching this garbage program --- even the work of changing everything I've already sent and submitted back to my Yahoo account is a bear.

Using Thunderbird to get around Gmail's ridiculous restrictions is a very inefficient idea. Like buying a 2nd car to get the features your 1st car doesn't have. Just trade the 1st car and be done with it. Or in this case, just use another email client. Problem solved.

I use this email for a small business... It groups all my "contact forms" together. I dislike this VERY MUCH!!!!

Until you are able to convince Google to change this feature... Here is a tip... Change the subject line, which will fix the "conversation" feature. I also added a signature that asked the recipient to change the subject so I could get their emails more easily. Here is a post that explains how to change the subject line. It has photos, so it's easier than just telling you.

http://hanfordlemoore.com/v/gmail-arr...

I don't like that this is over 2 years old and still a problem, and I don't like that it is already marked as solved when the solutions here are just work-arounds (using thunderbird isn't a solution for me: I lose my calendar feature and to-do task widget without gmail open in my browser as well, and changing the subject line is not only an extreme inconvenience as it will get confusing what the emails are about, but in many cases an impossibility - such as when I am forwarded automated e-mails from my e-business which cannot change the subject line). Tell me again why this is marked as solved?

This is THE ONLY problem that is keeping me from using gmail, and I really loved it so if they would just fix it already, I could have the perfect mail client. It used to be an option, so it's not like it would be asking them to do that much. Why was it even taken away as an option to begin with? In general, it seems you would want to offer your customers as many options to customize their preferences as possible...

@wykananda
I am not sure if you work for Google, but I find it strange someone who likes conversation threading would come to a support thread where people who do not like conversation threading are here to express to google why they would like the option to turn the F****ng thing off!

A lot of what you say about Yahoo is false, and I personally FAR prefer the new Yahoo calendar (beta) to google calendar.

Support on google is absolutely non existent. I have had several direct exchanges with yahoo.

Yahoo is developing new stuff all the time, not to the degree of google, of course, but I am happy to pay £10 a year for a yahoo mail plus account, and Im sure others are too.

Gmail has no features which are of any interest to me. I want a mail programme to have folders on the top left, messages to the right, and a reading pane below. Full stop. If google cannot provide that, I will go elsewhere, hence Yahoo.

Saying one should get used to the way Google works is, for me, like telling someone who has had an arm chopped off to get used to it, there are some advantages. YOU may not see it that way, but I DO.

But its weird you, who LIKE the way it is, would spend ANY time here. Its not like if they provide conversation threading as an option they would then be taking something away from YOU... so why are you here, you clearly disagree with all these people who want a thread-less mail option...

Mark.

for Linka.fox and others. I look at it now as a plan to get people to use their new GWave that has threading and lots of other features and they think threading is wonderful. Seems their vision of perfection does not include the option of turning it off. that is too bad.

right now I forward my Gmail to my Outlook as long as I am home and deal with gmail only when I travel (leaving the forwarding mail to deal with after I get home. I change the subject so as to keep messages separate though. It is a work around but overall like it better than the other options.

@wykananda
I use email for email. I am not interested in the chatting and other stuff you mention as "features" of gmail.

the new look yahoo mail is absolutely beautiful. It has a much more powerful attachment facility than gmail, and looks like an email programme, and has a very elegant graphic design - not a smudged mess of text like the gmail interface.

not having a preview panel is another awful aspect of gmail, that it takes you from your message view when you click on a message... then you have to navigate back to see your messages again... an unnecessary step an messy IMO.

the only reason i want gmail to work as I would like it to work is that it has the fastest searching abilities.

so do you work for google?

@wykananda
you sure do a lot of sighing!

i use imap on yahoo, and via my WMPhone too.

there is plenty of great flitering on yahoo, you can create FOLDERS (remember those?) and filter different pop accounts into account folders (try that with google!)

i prefer the yahoo apps to google, especially the calendar which is more responsive and has a fantastic zoom feature. (but we are talking about MAIL, not about chatting or conferencing or turning a Fugly interface into something a little less vile by having a pretty banner on top)

Yahoo has a far better design that Google, more user friendly and more logical. Google is faster.

You should have the option of shutting off conversation threading on a per email basis or altogether. Period.

I love Yahoo mail and have been with them for many years. I have a gmail account for Google services and as a second email. There are many features I like in both.

Use whatever works for you and stop the spitting contest. It's off topic. Start your own problem regarding which one is better and knock yourselves out.

BTW, thank you Mark and wykanada for pointing out features of both that I will now use.

Here is a link to a petition to add the "non-threaded conversation" feature to gmail. Looks like they still need a lot of signatures so go sign it and pass it on!

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions...

I think the fundamental issue is that gmail is not focused on business users. I just started to forward my business email domain to gmail because my yahoo small business account has recently exhibited very poor reliability, and have discovered that while gmail is currently more reliable, its features are so poorly adapted for business use as to be unusable.

I am going to stop forwarding my business email to gmail and go somewhere else. When I find a service I like, I will move my domain there. But gmail isn't it, that I already know after 3 weeks on it.

@wykananda
Accusing people of making "empty accusations" when they are clearly frustrated, annoyed and disappointed with gmail is of little value to anybody.

You like conversation threading. This thread is for people who do not like conversation threading adn would like google to change that feature.

Why do you spend so much energy trying to prove you are right. Please do us a favour and go away.

Thanks very much,
Mark.

@wykananda
I am not sure if you work for Google, but I find it strange someone who likes conversation threading would come to a support thread where people who do not like conversation threading are here to express to google why they would like the option to turn the F****ng thing off!

A lot of what you say about Yahoo is false, and I personally FAR prefer the new Yahoo calendar (beta) to google calendar.

Support on google is absolutely non existent. I have had several direct exchanges with yahoo.

Yahoo is developing new stuff all the time, not to the degree of google, of course, but I am happy to pay £10 a year for a yahoo mail plus account, and Im sure others are too.

Gmail has no features which are of any interest to me. I want a mail programme to have folders on the top left, messages to the right, and a reading pane below. Full stop. If google cannot provide that, I will go elsewhere, hence Yahoo.

Saying one should get used to the way Google works is, for me, like telling someone who has had an arm chopped off to get used to it, there are some advantages. YOU may not see it that way, but I DO.

But its weird you, who LIKE the way it is, would spend ANY time here. Its not like if they provide conversation threading as an option they would then be taking something away from YOU... so why are you here, you clearly disagree with all these people who want a thread-less mail option...

Mark.

I've had it.

As of today I am looking for an alternative online mail service - I can't afford to keep missing new emails because they're not shown at the top of the heap.

I also dislike the conversation view and why I have never changed from Yahoo.. but recently I have needed https all the time and google offers that and surprisingly, yahoo does not. Anyone know of a GOOD web email company that also does ssl - https ?

C'mon google. Please just give users the option to toggle conversation threading on or off.

dlong
i think dickananda is a tad autistic... likes being a smarty pants party pooper.
alas, none of that will make any difference, google is very unlike yahoo in this regard, yahoo actually communicate with their clients.
aah well

Yeah, even I'm starting to get a little annoyed here, now.

Wyk, it sounds like you're being a bit derisive when you say, "Actually dong, youcant claims that they miss new emails because they are not shown at the top of the heap. Firstly, any conversation that gets a new email always appears at the top of the email list - so youcant can't mean that (i hope). "

A lot of people are claiming to miss emails due to this, including the original poster. When you say things like that, it sounds like you're treating those of us who do miss emails due to conversation threading like kindergarteners because we're just too stupid to find the emails or something.

Please just accept the fact that some of us, especially those of us who use gmail for business emails, do lose emails due to conversation threading and the work-arounds provided are not viable solutions. We just want Google to offer us the option they used to. It's not a debate, it's a request. Nothing more.

Sure, no problem. We all have bad days. But my point is more or less, we've come here to voice to Google we would like the option, and you seem to be focused more on trying to convince us to like it (or at least accept it). We aren't here to be convinced, just to be heard. :)

I'm not entirely sure. It's some web-based form of automation generated when a sale is made. It could probably be done, but it is still a folly on Google's end. They should not make a consumer alter the way their business generates e-mails to be compatible with their email client, especially since they used to offer the option to view conversation threading. I'm still puzzled as to why they would take that away in the first place.

Please, Children (wykananda, dlong500 et al) Stop it!

You've made your points with deafening stridency and varying degrees of success; the Grown-ups are getting bored.

Sent to Gmail via "Suggest a feature" page:

Conversation.

Sometimes is useful.
Most of the time is just a plain and simple pain in the "back end".
Don't force "features"! Give options!
Microsoft is going down the drain because they "know what is best for you". Don't follow their steps.
Best regards.

The company I work for did a pilot using gmail. After 6 months they did a survey and 80% hated gmail because of the conversation feature.

Now we've dumped gmail and we're using exchange instead..whew.

any solution yet?

Unfortunately Google has decided this wasn't a problem, but actually a 'feature'... Typical move of any corporation that has grown to the point of immobility and self assured superiority by reason of its sheer mass... My advice is to move away from this corporate monster and give gmx a try...

Does gmx auto update emails and show inbox (2) or anything like that in the tab title? these are the benefits I am getting in gmail compared to the drawback of conversation mode. If gmx does have these I will give it a try.

Yahoo/ymail has these in the *new* yahoo mail. And it doesn't have conversation mode!

Windows live/hotmail does not auto update emails, right?

Just an observation, why does google make something simple like email (that even my parents can use) - difficult?

Not everyone has time/could care less about trying to figure out how freaking conversation threading works!!!

I've used Gmail for years now - probably 5 years, I guess. IMAP helps, but unfortunately I often have to access mail using a browser interface.

Even after all these years of using Gmail, the threading function still strikes me as badly conceived, stubbornly maintained, and strongly alienating to a huge number of Gmail users. The primary reason that I maintain my Gmail account is for continuity. Of course, it does have many wonderful features, but enforced threading sours the entire experience.

Google is doing some pretty amazing stuff. When people look back in the future, I hope that these complaints will be seen as a very minor blip in the history of a wonderful company, rather than the beginnings of a movement against the philosophy of Google. Little things that annoy so many people are probably worth considering in terms of a bigger picture.

to all:
wykananda is CLEARLY a Google troll

just sayin'

Yeah, I did - along time ago, once. I briefly was forced to use a webmail application when MSN was refusing to receive mail from my ISP for corporate or political reasons.
Webmail is ridiculously inferior any desktop client, so as soon as possible I returned to using Entourage on my Mac...but if you need to send email through a browser, then Gmail is the poorest possible choice because of the always on threading, for ALL of the reasons so well articulated in his forum. After I posting once, it was quickly evident that GOOGLE WAS NEVER GOING TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE. This forum has been online for 2 years now, and Google's official Rep hasn't been seen since he replied to the original poster.
I've only followed it with amusement since I never turned off the message forwarding.

oh, and btw: wykananda is definitely a Google troll - that or an internet type drama queen.
either way...

It is unbelievable that this problem has not been solved since the time that this was first posted! I just came across this thread while desperately trying to find a solution to this threading problem. I thought that surely, by the bottom of this conversation, there would be a solution! I originally switched to gmail for the calendar compatability with my iphone. I'm paying my 20. and going back to Yahoo, which I have had for 9 years.

I've made a number of comments throughout this thread while gradually reading through it. This week I've been working on converting some of our admin accounts to the gmail business application. It's been something of a mess and was much more involved than I expected or desired (which is pretty normal). The main issue I have run into is the conversation threading.

The primary email account I was assigned to convert to gmail was one of our admin accounts which receives "receipts" from our website. It's almost an archive of emails, but not quite.

The problem is that many of our forms use auto-generated subjects, whether they are forms for event registration, product purchases, donations, feedback and requests, errors, or whatever. For example, one of our generated emails reads "New Online Donation to ____" with the blank being the specific department or fund. Another email reads "Online Payment Confirmation: ____" with the blank being the form/product, and another reads "Update Information: ____" with the blank being the username.

Because these various forms generate identical subject lines, our gmail account decides that they are a conversation and so it lumps them all together. That becomes a problem when you are looking for a confirmation email of an online donation to a specific fund, because all donations to that specific fund are lumped together, or even worse, some are lumped together and others are not.

Don't ask me why, but we have several sections where the list of emails reads something like:

webmaster - Online Payment Confirmation: Form1
webmaster (2) - Online Payment Confirmation: Form1
webmaster - Online Payment Confirmation: Form1
webmaster - Online Payment Confirmation: Form2
webmaster (4) - Online Payment Confirmation: Form1
webmaster - Online Payment Confirmation: Form2

And all of the emails are separate registrations for separate individuals. Now, I understand why some get grouped (same sender and subject), but it seems to pick and choose somewhat randomly. I think it's based on when the email is received in comparison to other emails. That is, if we receive two with identical subjects without receiving a differing email between them, then it lumps them together. But, if we get an email with a different subject line (say, "Update Information:") between the two, then it doesn't. As everything is filtered and labeled, I'm still not certain though.

The solution for this is that now this email subject reads:
Online Payment Confirmation: Form1: User1: timestamp

Now they aren't attached to one another. Initially I thought just adding the user would be enough, but there was still the case where the same user had multiple entries. So, we had to add the timestamp. Now it separates them out and doesn't combine them into one conversation, but now the email message might as well just be in the subject line. :/

Even worse, this means a lot of rewriting code for our forms. As our former system (Squirrel Mail) didn't have this feature, there was no need for unique tags in subject lines for many things. So, they weren't programmed to have unique tags, and in many cases the same email was sent to the user and our server. Now I'm adding several new lines of code to each form in order to send separate emails to the user and our own system, as the bloated subject line looks tacky.

My main complaint is that if I could simply change a setting and turn off the conversation feature, then there would be no need for extra coding. We wouldn't need to attach timestamps to the ends of every email from our website, nor would we need to send separate emails to the users and our system.

tl;dr
Mandated feature-
To account in their coding,
Programmers required.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been using exchange and it's such a relief not having to deal with the conversation feature.

It's a lot faster too.

I think google is missing the boat on this one. The organization I work for has around 80000 employees worldwide and if the pilot had been a success google would have made a killing.

I've never in my life sent an email to an unintended recipient - that's not until I used gmail with its horrid conversation feature. And trying to find a particular part of an email sent months ago that, by now, has 100 threads attached to it, is a headache. Goodbye, gmail

I have little to add to this comprehensive discussion, but have chosen to comment rather than lurk in order to voice my vote for alternative display modes. The web-based email service I use has multiple display options, including:

- "sort by arrival time ("oldest first" or "newest first"),
- "sort by size" (great for finding and deleting emails with huge and worthless attachments),
- "sort by To Address"
- "sort by From Address",
- "sort by Subject"

And, it has "thread view", which is like Gmail's conversation mode.

It is really strange and unfortunate that Google is so welded and obdurate about denying choice in Gmail. I use and rely upon many other Google products/services, including Android, Google docs, and Google Voice -- they are wonderful -- and so it hard to understand why Google would choose to degrade the user experience in Gmail....

My main objection to Google's conversation mode is that I always feel that I'm on the precipice of accidentally sending the wrong email to the wrong person. I've done it a couple of times it is a horrible nauseating feeling. So now I just use Gmail as my "backup" for my main email -- I have all emails, sent and received, automatically forwarded to Gmail for backup and safekeeping and search.

Another gripe while I'm at it -- Gmail seems to lack a decent "wild card" search mode -- you have to type in the full prefix name of an email address to get a hit. Also, it lacks the "spelling suggestion" ("Do you mean: ??) feature that the regular Google search engine has.

TLDR: I vote (implore) for including other email display options in Gmail.

I hate google converstaion feature. If anyone here from Google, please have an option to just turn it off. or say Unthread a particular conversation..please please please

User should have an option to turnoff this feature. I often missing some e-mails because of this feature. Planning to switch to Yahoo. Google are you listening??????

This feature was great until I started forwarding system status and hardware failure messages to my gmail account, and now it threads together completely unrelated things just because of the auto-generated subjects and separates things that are actually related so you have to keep cross-refrencing between threads to get the full picture and ignore the more than half the stuff in each thead at the same time.

I have missed a number of critical messages due to them being stuck in the middle of a 200 long thread before.

This is insane!

I've used email since 1995 and never has it been as confusing as Gmail has made it with their threaded conversation mode. I recently moved from Exchange to Google Apps (and Android phone). I pay for the premium Google accounts simply so that I can use Outlook on my desktop and avoid threaded conversations. However on my Android phone I now have the same problem of missing important emails via grouping. Please, please please Google make threaded conversations an option that can be disable for both the web interface and the Android interface!

Sign the petition! Get rid of this feature!

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions...

I was for long under the impression that I must be the only person (/idiot) who feels screwed by Gmaii's threading/conversation.

It is comforting to find that Gmail's threading pisses off even other people who know about computers and related issues.

I wonder when will google will solve this problem? When they get time from developing more technologically advanced services and products (android, chrome os, nexus one etc), maybe they will solve this simple email problem?

Sign the petition! Get rid of this feature!

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions...

GMAIL conversations are now driving me nuts.

Please, please GOOGLE add a way to turn off conversations.

I feel the same just all these guys. I hate conversation mode o gmail.

As of this posting, 132 people consider this a problem and it was reported over 2 years ago. I don't understand why this is (apparently) not a concern for Google. Since receiving my android phone, I've been using GMail more frequently and this is the ONLY thing that I have to complain about. Come on Google-- give us a freaking choice! It doesn't even have to be the default, just let experienced users change it. Don't be evil!

This threading thing is a complete nightmare and totally dysfunctional. In real life and work we often want to send emails to 3rd parties and be ABSOLUTELY sure that the original sender doesn't see what we've sent. It's almost giving me heart failure firing up the inbox and seeing 'Frank' and 'CEO' grouped together in the same conversation. I have to go back in and triple check that the CEO really isn't party to this.

As a result it is impossible to trust googlemail with sensitive conversations, the threading is giving the illusion that you have accidentally linked conversations which must on no account be linked.

It's probably good for children.

If there is no solution to this I can't see how I can carry on with this eccentric farce.

(Just gonna go back and check a fourth time that I haven't landed myself in shit. Thanks Google)