Businesses around the world are finding that Gmail is one of the most reliable and portable email platforms out there today. With powerful tools that bring messages together and allow us to gain control of our Inbox, Gmail has become the platform of choice for many. One tool that allows us to keep better control of our Inbox is message threading. Here is an overview of this feature and how to change its behavior.

What is email threading?

When email was first created, email platforms treated each message that was sent or delivered as a separate message, even if it was a reply to a previous message. Over time, email became less about individual messages and more about conversations. Look at your emails and chances are that many individual emails are really about one core message or connected to one main conversation.

If you use Gmail, this conversation, based on an original message, is threaded together. This means that you have one conversation (the main email) with many messages going back and forth. Receive a new message and it is added to the conversation at the top of the thread. If you want to see older messages you simply scroll down the thread once it is open.

While this is a great way to display messages, in a compact way that cuts down on the number of emails in your Inbox, longer threads can become unruly, making it more difficult to actually find a specific message because it is in the midst of a thread. Beyond this, some users prefer to have non-threaded messages, with all messages listed separately.

How to unthread your emails

To unthread your emails simply:

1. Log into your Google account and open Gmail.
2. Press the cog in the top-right of the screen.
3. Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
4. Scroll down to Conversation View.
5. Tick Conversation view so that it is off.
6. Press Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.

What will happen when you do this

Once you press Save Changes you should be taken back to your inbox and you will notice a few changes. Firstly the number of emails in your Inbox will be higher, and secondly, messages that were threaded will now be added individually, based on when they arrived into your Inbox. If you are looking for these messages, you will need to either scroll through your Inbox or search for them using keywords and other search operators.

It should also be noted that when you reply to emails, a new message will be sent to both your sent folder and main Inbox, but the replies will not show up in the body of the message you replied to.

If you are looking to learn more about using Gmail in your office, contact us today to see how we can help employ the right tech tools to enhance your business efficiency.

Published on 4th September 2014 by Jeanne DeWitt.