One of my favorite things about software is when they provide you lots of different options so you can customize it to work the way you want it. One of my least favorite things is when they make the option I don’t like the default :).
Recently I’ve seen several comments from friends about how they hate that Gmail and Yahoo Mail now thread email conversations instead of simply displaying all the received messages in chronological order. In this post, I’m going to show you how to change it back to unthreaded, with an added bonus of showing you how to do it in Outlook as well.
What is Threading?
Threading is when your email service sorts your messages so that all the replies and forwards are grouped together rather than just listing them in the order they arrived in your Inbox. It’s also referred to as “conversations.” The screenshots below show an example of each type in Gmail.
Unthreaded
This is what I consider the standard view of an Inbox. As each message comes in, it gets added to the top of the list. It doesn’t include any of the related sent messages.
Threaded
This is what the Inbox looks like when the messages are threaded.
You’ll see the first item shows a “(4)” in it to indicate there are four messages in the conversation, because it includes both the messages sent and the messages received. If you click on that item, you’ll see all four messages, with the most recent one (at the bottom) fully expanded.
Note also that the Inbox list has the two unrelated messages that came in between the messages in the conversation showing below it. This is why I don’t like the threaded list. My brain expects to see the messages in the order they came in. It may not look that bad in this example where there’s just one threaded conversation, but when there are a lot more I find the whole thing confusing to follow, especially when you add forwarded messages into the mix.
Also note that if someone changes the subject line along the way, that message is no longer included in the conversation, adding yet another level of confusion.
Turning Threading On and Off
In Gmail on Desktop
- Click the gear (Settings) icon at the top right.
- Go to Settings > General.
- Click the radio button for turning on/off the Conversation View.
- Click the Save Changes button.
NOTE: The instructions above only apply to the desktop version of Gmail. If you’re using the Gmail app on an Android or iOS device, there’s currently no option to turn off threading. However, you can add your Gmail account to the default email apps on your Android and iOS mobile devices, which may give you the option to turn off threading depending on the device and the version of the software. For example, Apple Mail on iOS 10 has an option to turn threading on and off and the email client I have on my Samsung Galaxy S5 (Android 6) only has unthreaded messages. Here’s a screenshot from my Galaxy S5, with the same email conversation showing in the Inbox for the Gmail app on the left and for the Gmail account added to the built-in email app on the right.
Thanks to T4L reader Orla for reminding me of this distinction after she had already provided the great tip later in this post about a problem with iOS 10 email settings.
In Yahoo Mail
- Click the gear icon at the top right.
- Go to Settings > Viewing Email.
- Check or uncheck the box for turning on/off the Conversation View.
- Click the Save button.
In Outlook 2007/2010
- Click the View ribbon.
- Check or uncheck the Show as Conversations box.
Note that if you turn on the conversation view, you have several more options to choose from. (I can’t figure out what “Show Senders Above the Subject” does because checking/unchecking it doesn’t appear to make any difference in my case.) Thank you to reader Ajda for pointing out that the “Show Senders Above the Subject” option applies when your Outlook window is too narrow to show both sender and subject line on the same line, so you can choose which one is above and which one is below.
In Apple iOS
Thanks to T4L reader Arnold for sharing this information about how to turn off threading on the iPhone and iPad! Note that the option is also available on my iPhone 4S with iOS 9.3.5.
There is a ‘Threading’ option (on or off) in Apple/IOS (version 10 at least – not sure about older versions) phones.
To disable (bc I loathe threading), go to ‘Settings’ | ‘Mail’. Scroll towards the bottom and there is a section labeled ‘Threading’. The first line in this section reads ‘Organize by Thread’ with the switch to enable or disable. I moved to the left to disable and my threading is gone!
UPDATE: The iOS 10 update has caused other sorting problems. Apple added a new option for “Most Recent Message on Top” but the default setting is Off, so messages are no longer in order. Go to the Settings > Mail > Threading section to set it to On. (There’s also a new setting for “Complete Threads” that you can try out to see if you like it or not.) Huge thanks to T4L reader Orla for sharing this info with T4L!
How about yourself? Do you prefer your messages threaded or unthreaded? Let me know in the comments below!
You may also be interested in:
Automatically Move Gmail Messages from Promotions to Primary Tab
Fix Email Issues Caused by Upgrading Your iPhone/iPad to iOS 10
Comments
Thank you! Very difficult to be sure you are not replying or forwarding to the wrong person when threading is turned on.
You’re welcome!
So, having now unthreaded my inbox, is there a way to indicate whether or not I have replied to a specific message without going back and searching through my sent folder?
Hi Emily.
I’m afraid not. Gmail’s lack of Replied To indicator is just one of many reasons I can’t use it as my email client.
– Elizabeth
Threading has been driving me nuts, for one thing it is so easy to send a response to the wrong person in the queue, and a challenge to find most recent replies.
Thanks for showing how to switch this off.
Glad you found it helpful, John!
I remember feeling this way years ago when I first started using threading. The reality is that’s a massive improvement. You are grouping your response with the original request which is where it belongs. In fact some people I work with have never experience linear email and can’t imagine not having a conversation grouped together. Take the time to learn it. You’ll no longer need to, sort, search, group by, switch folders, check sent items, and outbox. That’s just ridiculous. The author of this post isn’t really doing you any favors by giving you a way out.
Thanks for the tip. Turning conversation off was a huge relief. It was confusing and annoying.
Glad you found it helpful!
This article just took years off my life. I was constantly worried that I had hit “reply all” in a thread that had begun with a group of people since when you check “sent” it showed the entire group in the “to” field but showed the message I had just sent to an individual. I also had to open up the thread to confirm I had sent just to an individual (having mild panic attacks each time). Also when searching for an old email it was often “hidden” inside another conversation thread so took me much longer to find the specific information.
I am ecstatic over being shown how to stop this madness. Thank you!
I’m glad you found it helpful, Brian. Thanks for taking the time to comment! – Elizabeth
I’m sure that most people complaining about the threading on Gmail are talking about the mobile apps which, as you point out, cannot be changed to non-threaded view. I have specific reasons for ~not~ wanting the accounts I monitor via Gmail in my default mail app on my iPhone; basically there are as many as 10 accounts that I’m sometimes in and out of across three different organizations, and I have no desire for that in my mail.app inbox. I’ve filled out as many forms as exist, and complained to anyone who’ll listen (or who won’t, more likely), to no avail. This is one case where Google knows best, and they’re not gonna listen to the likes of me, a mere end-user.
Hi,
Will try the workarounds you have suggested.
So glad that I’m not the only one who finds this bunching of mails confusing. In fact very infuriating!
There’s another change I noticed lately in gmail – it used to “collapse” previous messages quoted in my reply using an ellipsis (…) that you could click on to expand all replies. All of a sudden this seems to be gone which leaves me with lots of scrolling to get down to the next message in the conversation thread (yes I actually like the threaded conversation view haha).
Any help would be great appreciated!
Hi Mike.
How are you using Gmail? In a web browser or as an app? If the latter, is it Android or iOS?
– Elizabeth
Oh yeah, the new Gmail app is a disaster in terms of user interface. I fumble around for minutes usually in a long threaded message trying to find the part I’m looking for, because of course they’re never strictly chronological. The control icons are obscure, functions that used to be there are no longer there (like the incredibly useful “expand all” or “collapse all”), etc. Really don’t know what they were on when they released this, but I don’t want what they’re having.
I honestly have no idea why anyone has ever found Gmail useful. I can’t believe you can’t sort on other fields like Sender and Subject Line.
– Elizabeth, #TeamOutlook 🙂