Not to be picky, but it would be great if we could switch from Conversation view and back quicker than through the settings screen. Usually Conversation view is great but there are cases when it doesn't work and you want to quickly switch.
The other part of the request is for folder support; once the messages are freed from conversations, can users group them in folders as they are used to doing? http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmail-adds-folders-by-improving-label.html makes it sound like it's partly possible - i.e. you can use labels like a single level of folders - but the devil is in the details. In particular, I don't know that there's a desktop notifier that alerts you to new messages that bypass the Inbox and go straight to a 'folder'.
Now, what about the ability to simply SORT an email list based on sender or subject ??
Perhaps the flexibility to view email lists in atomic (un-threaded) mode will allow/enable/justify incorporating the incredibly useful ability to SORT !
I may try non-threaded, because there are times where it is just easier to find something. But, if I am looking at a single email, I'd love to be able to click a button and the page change to conversation view for that one email only!
Thank you so much for bringing this feature..Threaded Conversation was the only thing i hated about Gmail, but was forced to use it. Now my life will be mush more simplified.
Will this apply to the Gmail app for Android and other mobile platforms as well? If so, when will the new Gmail app be released that will allow us to support this?
As an admin for our email system after our migration from Exchange - thank you for this feature!
About damned time. Now give me a real preview reading pane, the ability to make a compose window open in a new window by default, the ability to stay signed in to two apps accounts at once and the ability to sort as well as search and we'll be cookin'.
Thank you so much. You have no idea how many emails I have lost while cleaning up my inbox because of the complications associated with the many emails that can get wrapped up into one string.
I'm still waiting for there to be a display mode that catches up to simple text cell interfaces for UseNet in the late 80's with indented thread trees and dependent content. Conversation view is great, but it doesn't create an insightful view of what replies to what at a look. Go take a look at GNUS or even "mutt" for email back in the day.
I think conversation threading is genius, but for your hard work and continual innovation, I love you. I hope the old people to whom this caters love you too.
Umm - where's the google apps control panel? In my administrator view I see: * Dashboard * Users and groups * Domain settings * Advanced tools * Support * Service settings but couldn't find the "“Enable pre-release features” option selected in the Google Apps control panel, and to individuals using Gmail."
SUPER! I've been waiting for a long time for this. It seems to be work very well. It is great now being able to chose/switch between different views. THANKS! NGD
Very happy to hear "traditional inbox" option will be there...very happy.
I only started using my gmail 2 months ago. I was very shocked to see you can sort by date, list without thread, finding email was nightmare for me (as email search was not the best, compare to my old yahoo). Was planning to move until I saw this.
next step could be the possibility to thread emails at user's will. that's because threading doesn't always work perfectly (mostly due to strange use case)
It's great to see that conversations can now be turned off as they just don't make sense all the time.
Some 'conversations' such as mailing list threads which tend to branch get confusing when presented as a gmail conversation.
However these still need a thread hierachy to make sense of them (which afaik is not yet provided)
Other conversations - such as conversations with a limited group of friends do (IMHO) work as gmail conversations however. As such it would be useful if the conversations on/off were tied to the tags being viewed.
i.e. I give every mailing list I subscribe to a tag. Then when I filter in that tag the view changes to a threaded list. Conversations with friends have a different tag, and when I filter by thay one it appears as a conversation.
So thanks for the new feature... but can we have more please ;o)
The quote is bang-on - i too quite like the threaded view, but many non-I.T users i support absolutely despise it. The on/off choice is long, long, overdue. Does this work on Blackberry's too?
Now all i ask is for you to abolish the ridiculous 40-character limit on labels (which completely ruins Exchange nested folder structures), and i will be a very happy customer indeed :)
Why can't we unthread just one conversation as we see fit? Or at least delete or unthread just one message instead of the entire conversation? The main gripe my users have is that some messages threaded together in one conversation simply don't belong. For example, messages that go out to customers in a shared territory may be bcc'd or cc'd to other sales managers, who in turn may be replying to that sales rep about a completely different customer. We then have a conflict of interest in that the one conversation pertains to two customers and since the sales rep cannot unthread the one message that doesn't belong, they're stuck with having to worry about that conversation belonging to 2 different labels and to be careful about who they're replying to. This is exacerbated when the customers both reply!
More than anything, what bothered me in the conversation view was the difficulty of changing the Subject title of a conversation. Many times the conversation subject had nothing to do with the latter emails within a conversation. it would be nice to change the view on the fly (via a button on the main gMail page) instead of having to go into settings.
This is great. We use Google apps as our email provider at work. I am all right with the conversation view normally, but there are some intense days where it is just not suitable. Working in the commercial real estate field, as the final details for a closing are being ironed out, a single conversation can be shared between buyer and seller representatives, surveyors, assessors, lawyers, title company representatives and banks, not to mention other random folks. It is difficult to follow when there are a ton of parties sending rapid emails back and forth between organizations and the way that the conversation view compresses the conversations (i.e., very easy to miss a detail).
And what about those of us who don't hate threading but do hate how it lacks any options? The on/off switch was a good start, but the threading still feels like a half-finished Labs project.
Nice! How about adding support for 'sub-threading' in the conversation view? That would be equally useful to "threading enthusiasts" as the 'no conversation view' is for the "email traditionalists".
Right now it's just a 'flat mess' in the conversation view and very hard to track sub-conversations in a given thread.
Awesome guys! Thanks. My company moved to Gmail/Gapps some time ago and the threaded/conversation view was the thing that I really didn't like - so glad we now have the option of turning this off - really makes things easier for me. (I do understand why you have the conversation view and I know those who love it...but for me, it made the email client less friendly and less easy to use).
OK, diehard Outlook users may like the old way of zillions of individual e-mails listed by date. I LOVE GMAIL and Conversations, having just switched from Yahoo, and having used Outlook at work. I am having difficulty convincing friends of Gmail. They do not like listing Conversations by date created. THEY ARE RIGHT! A quick and trivial solution is to list Conversations by date the last mail was appended. MAKE SENSE? In that manner, THE CURRENT/ACTIVE CONVERSATION WOULD ALWAYS BE LISTED AT THE TOP within the Label/Folder it had been moved to. This is particularly important if the conversation started two months ago. As an engineer, that seems almost too simply to do. Please implement; it would shut up Microsoft, as Conversation View eats all others alive. Listing the conversations by order of last mail appended should be the default, and I cannot imagine who would want to have the current method.
and finally i can successfully turn-off my conversation view.thank you Gmail , my life is really better.
Happy to know that google listens. :) thank you 100000000 times.
but without sorting function & folders instead of labels ( off course we arrange the messages into different folders to avoid seeing in the regular inbox , in case of labels it still appears in inbox.) this may not be 100%.
thank you again for making my life better and hope very soon google can disable the conversation view in blackberry ( still it gets worst in BB, as Gmail in BB not even shows who is the sender is and just subject line with number of messages.)
Please make conversations mode a 'toggle' for sorting email so users can easily switch between modes. I'm using conversations mode for email lookup and management, but do not like conversation mode for checking new email since emails get lost in threads. Thanks!
I have tried hard to get used to the threaded conversations, but that's been the #1 stumbling block for me to make the switch from Yahoo. I even started using Google calendar because my husband raved about it so much -- and kept bugging me to try it -- but I hated Gmail because of threaded conversations. He adopted Gmail immediately because he hates a cluttered inbox. A "cluttered" inbox doesn't bother me when I have great search capabilities.
Much as I tried to get used to it, my brain just doesn't work that way. I appreciate new technology (I even work as a product marketer for a cyber security company), and and I'm only in my 30's -- in short, I embrace change. But your statement implies it's a comfort issue. That people who don't like threading don't like change or can't adapt. I would argue that some people's brains work in different ways, and no matter how hard someone tries to get used to something, it just isn't the easiest way for them.
"While most Gmail users find that these features save lots of time, naturally there are people who want to keep using email in more familiar ways."
Thankfully you guys finally listened to the customer. But it seems like you still think the customer is wrong. I disagree.
much more helpful would be to be able to JOIN various messages into a conversation. that way one could handle those ignorant people that want to annoy us by using random subject-lines.
I have pre realeas enabled, however, cannot see conversational view in setting!
Also, this features would only work if emails can be sorted by sender or subject or date sent as required. This is a much required facility in gmail/apps.... until then our company cannot do without outlook.
I have not yet set up my Gmail but from just a few hours of looking it over it is obvious to me that the decision to use use either Conversation(Labels), or use Folders depends on what you are going to be using it for, Like painting...Sometimes you need a brush, sometimes a roller. In real estate I have hundreds of prospects and clients each month. In my opinion, just based on the little I have read, I do not think that I can even have that many labels (one for each prospect or client). Also, since there are so many cases of the same profesionals being associated with different prospects and clients, I think that conversations threads could turn into a confusing mess. I only hope that by turning off "conversation" that I can sort my emails while in the inbox by date, subject, or email address! It makes it so much eaiser to then be able to move the inbox emails into the proper folders. I am looking forward to trying Gmail now that Conversations can be turned off.
I have disabled Conversation View on my Gmail account, but I am not able to disable Conversation View on Gmail Mobile for my Blackberry Bold. As a result, my Gmail Mobile frantically goes through my Gmail messages trying to thread the emails. While Gmail is performing this threading, my Blackberry will not function: no access to emails and no access to voice. And the threading continues frantically for hours until my Blackberry battery is drained. Hard resets (removing the battery for several minutes) has little or no effect. Is there ANY way to stop Gmail Mobile from threading my emails?
I use Gmail Mobile to receive Gmails on my Blackberry Bold where the Gmails are integrated with emails received from my company's Blackberry enterprise server.The Gmails are separately displayed as well as displayed in an integrated display. Although I have disabled Conversation View on my Gmail Account, my Mobile Gmail display frantically seeks to rearrange my Gmails in Conversation View threads, and when it is doing this function, it seizes control of my entire Blackberry device which will not perform any other function. The threading continues all day until the Blackberry Bold battery is drained. Soft resets and hard resets (removing the battery for several minutes) interrupts the rethreading only momentarily, and then the rethreading again seizes control of my device. Is there ANY way to disable the Gmail Mobile from attempting to reorganize my Gmails into threads?
What I would like to see is an option to make Conversation or List view the default. It's one thing to give 1000 users the option, buried in settings. It's another to set it up to be their default view.
Not to be picky, but it would be great if we could switch from Conversation view and back quicker than through the settings screen.
ReplyDeleteUsually Conversation view is great but there are cases when it doesn't work and you want to quickly switch.
The other part of the request is for folder support; once the messages are freed from conversations, can users group them in folders as they are used to doing?
ReplyDeletehttp://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmail-adds-folders-by-improving-label.html makes it sound like it's partly possible - i.e. you can use labels like a single level of folders - but the devil is in the details. In particular, I don't know that there's a desktop notifier that alerts you to new messages that bypass the Inbox and go straight to a 'folder'.
I'll give up my threaded conversations when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
ReplyDeleteCould you please change email snippets back to how they were? Or add it as an option?
ReplyDeleteThe snippet used to be of the latest email, but now it's the first email in the chain, and it's really annoying :(
Unfortunately, even the best features should be made into options to appease users who don't like them.
ReplyDeleteNice to have the configuration option.
ReplyDeleteNow, what about the ability to simply SORT an email list based on sender or subject ??
Perhaps the flexibility to view email lists in atomic (un-threaded) mode will allow/enable/justify incorporating the incredibly useful ability to SORT !
My respects to you, Gmail Team. I do not know why would someone want this, but the fact that is it a choice says a lot about your caring. Cheers!
ReplyDeletethere was a learning curve, but i would never go back.
ReplyDeleteWoohoo! Woohoo! Woohoo!
ReplyDeleteI may try non-threaded, because there are times where it is just easier to find something. But, if I am looking at a single email, I'd love to be able to click a button and the page change to conversation view for that one email only!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for bringing this feature..Threaded Conversation was the only thing i hated about Gmail, but was forced to use it. Now my life will be mush more simplified.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you can't teach an old Outlook dog new tricks. Sad day.
ReplyDeleteWill this apply to the Gmail app for Android and other mobile platforms as well? If so, when will the new Gmail app be released that will allow us to support this?
ReplyDeleteAs an admin for our email system after our migration from Exchange - thank you for this feature!
About damned time. Now give me a real preview reading pane, the ability to make a compose window open in a new window by default, the ability to stay signed in to two apps accounts at once and the ability to sort as well as search and we'll be cookin'.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the mobile client in android?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. You have no idea how many emails I have lost while cleaning up my inbox because of the complications associated with the many emails that can get wrapped up into one string.
ReplyDeleteCool. While it should stay on it is a good option none the less.
ReplyDeleteI'm still waiting for there to be a display mode that catches up to simple text cell interfaces for UseNet in the late 80's with indented thread trees and dependent content. Conversation view is great, but it doesn't create an insightful view of what replies to what at a look. Go take a look at GNUS or even "mutt" for email back in the day.
ReplyDeleteJá estou usando!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great new feature, Some users like better the traditional inbox like me. Good job Google.
ReplyDeleteI think conversation threading is genius, but for your hard work and continual innovation, I love you. I hope the old people to whom this caters love you too.
ReplyDeleteUmm - where's the google apps control panel? In my administrator view I see:
ReplyDelete* Dashboard
* Users and groups
* Domain settings
* Advanced tools
* Support
* Service settings
but couldn't find the "“Enable pre-release features” option selected in the Google Apps control panel, and to individuals using Gmail."
Can you help?
So with this setting, does it mean that messages I send to mailings lists I am on will finally show up in my inbox?
ReplyDeleteThe only way to find them before was to wait until someone responded and see that it was in the thread of that response...
THANK YOU!!!!!!
ReplyDeletewow!!!cheers! I've been waiting for this for years!
ReplyDeleteI still don't have the option available, but I'm anxiously waiting for it!
Yes, yes, YES!!! The ONLY thing that really bothered me about Gmail has now gone away! Thank you Google! Choice is always good.
ReplyDeletethanks for you permition and keep me uptoday
ReplyDeleteSUPER!
ReplyDeleteI've been waiting for a long time for this. It seems to be work very well. It is great now being able to chose/switch between different views.
THANKS!
NGD
Very happy to hear "traditional inbox" option will be there...very happy.
ReplyDeleteI only started using my gmail 2 months ago. I was very shocked to see you can sort by date, list without thread, finding email was nightmare for me (as email search was not the best, compare to my old yahoo).
Was planning to move until I saw this.
Thanks Google
great thing!
ReplyDeletenext step could be the possibility to thread emails at user's will. that's because threading doesn't always work perfectly (mostly due to strange use case)
It's great to see that conversations can now be turned off as they just don't make sense all the time.
ReplyDeleteSome 'conversations' such as mailing list threads which tend to branch get confusing when presented as a gmail conversation.
However these still need a thread hierachy to make sense of them (which afaik is not yet provided)
Other conversations - such as conversations with a limited group of friends do (IMHO) work as gmail conversations however. As such it would be useful if the conversations on/off were tied to the tags being viewed.
i.e. I give every mailing list I subscribe to a tag. Then when I filter in that tag the view changes to a threaded list. Conversations with friends have a different tag, and when I filter by thay one it appears as a conversation.
So thanks for the new feature... but can we have more please ;o)
Hallelujah!!! Thank you Google!
ReplyDeleteThe quote is bang-on - i too quite like the threaded view, but many non-I.T users i support absolutely despise it. The on/off choice is long, long, overdue. Does this work on Blackberry's too?
Now all i ask is for you to abolish the ridiculous 40-character limit on labels (which completely ruins Exchange nested folder structures), and i will be a very happy customer indeed :)
Please allow those of use that use Gmail outside of a corporate environment to TURN OFF conversation view.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we unthread just one conversation as we see fit? Or at least delete or unthread just one message instead of the entire conversation? The main gripe my users have is that some messages threaded together in one conversation simply don't belong. For example, messages that go out to customers in a shared territory may be bcc'd or cc'd to other sales managers, who in turn may be replying to that sales rep about a completely different customer. We then have a conflict of interest in that the one conversation pertains to two customers and since the sales rep cannot unthread the one message that doesn't belong, they're stuck with having to worry about that conversation belonging to 2 different labels and to be careful about who they're replying to. This is exacerbated when the customers both reply!
ReplyDeleteWould be great if we could use this as a filter for particular senders (efax for example) instead of a global setting!
ReplyDeletegood
ReplyDeleteMore than anything, what bothered me in the conversation view was the difficulty of changing the Subject title of a conversation. Many times the conversation subject had nothing to do with the latter emails within a conversation. it would be nice to change the view on the fly (via a button on the main gMail page) instead of having to go into settings.
ReplyDeleteThis is great. We use Google apps as our email provider at work. I am all right with the conversation view normally, but there are some intense days where it is just not suitable. Working in the commercial real estate field, as the final details for a closing are being ironed out, a single conversation can be shared between buyer and seller representatives, surveyors, assessors, lawyers, title company representatives and banks, not to mention other random folks. It is difficult to follow when there are a ton of parties sending rapid emails back and forth between organizations and the way that the conversation view compresses the conversations (i.e., very easy to miss a detail).
ReplyDeleteAnd what about those of us who don't hate threading but do hate how it lacks any options? The on/off switch was a good start, but the threading still feels like a half-finished Labs project.
ReplyDeleteNice! How about adding support for 'sub-threading' in the conversation view? That would be equally useful to "threading enthusiasts" as the 'no conversation view' is for the "email traditionalists".
ReplyDeleteRight now it's just a 'flat mess' in the conversation view and very hard to track sub-conversations in a given thread.
Thank you so much for this! You've made our users VERY happy!!!
ReplyDeleteAwesome guys! Thanks. My company moved to Gmail/Gapps some time ago and the threaded/conversation view was the thing that I really didn't like - so glad we now have the option of turning this off - really makes things easier for me. (I do understand why you have the conversation view and I know those who love it...but for me, it made the email client less friendly and less easy to use).
ReplyDeleteOK, diehard Outlook users may like the old way of zillions of individual e-mails listed by date. I LOVE GMAIL and Conversations, having just switched from Yahoo, and having used Outlook at work. I am having difficulty convincing friends of Gmail. They do not like listing Conversations by date created. THEY ARE RIGHT! A quick and trivial solution is to list Conversations by date the last mail was appended. MAKE SENSE? In that manner, THE CURRENT/ACTIVE CONVERSATION WOULD ALWAYS BE LISTED AT THE TOP within the Label/Folder it had been moved to. This is particularly important if the conversation started two months ago. As an engineer, that seems almost too simply to do. Please implement; it would shut up Microsoft, as Conversation View eats all others alive. Listing the conversations by order of last mail appended should be the default, and I cannot imagine who would want to have the current method.
ReplyDeleteIf you switch back and forth will it go back to the threaded conversation.
ReplyDeleteand finally i can successfully turn-off my conversation view.thank you Gmail , my life is really better.
ReplyDeleteHappy to know that google listens. :) thank you 100000000 times.
but without sorting function & folders instead of labels ( off course we arrange the messages into different folders to avoid seeing in the regular inbox , in case of labels it still appears in inbox.) this may not be 100%.
thank you again for making my life better and hope very soon google can disable the conversation view in blackberry ( still it gets worst in BB, as Gmail in BB not even shows who is the sender is and just subject line with number of messages.)
Please make conversations mode a 'toggle' for sorting email so users can easily switch between modes. I'm using conversations mode for email lookup and management, but do not like conversation mode for checking new email since emails get lost in threads. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMOBILE!
ReplyDeleteYOU FORGOT DISABLE CONVERSATION ON MOBILE DEVICES!!!!!!!
Am I suppose to wait for it for another FIVE fricking years?
I have tried hard to get used to the threaded conversations, but that's been the #1 stumbling block for me to make the switch from Yahoo. I even started using Google calendar because my husband raved about it so much -- and kept bugging me to try it -- but I hated Gmail because of threaded conversations. He adopted Gmail immediately because he hates a cluttered inbox. A "cluttered" inbox doesn't bother me when I have great search capabilities.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I tried to get used to it, my brain just doesn't work that way. I appreciate new technology (I even work as a product marketer for a cyber security company), and and I'm only in my 30's -- in short, I embrace change. But your statement implies it's a comfort issue. That people who don't like threading don't like change or can't adapt. I would argue that some people's brains work in different ways, and no matter how hard someone tries to get used to something, it just isn't the easiest way for them.
"While most Gmail users find that these features save lots of time, naturally there are people who want to keep using email in more familiar ways."
Thankfully you guys finally listened to the customer. But it seems like you still think the customer is wrong. I disagree.
Love Gmail. Love it even more with the Conversation Off option. Love that you listen to the people who use it. Good job.
ReplyDeleteHURRAY! This means I will no longer be accidentally sending important emails to the Trash! Goodbye Conversation View!
ReplyDeletemuch more helpful would be to be able to JOIN various messages into a conversation. that way one could handle those ignorant people that want to annoy us by using random subject-lines.
ReplyDeleteWhen will this be available for Business Apps users?
ReplyDeleteI have pre realeas enabled, however, cannot see conversational view in setting!
ReplyDeleteAlso, this features would only work if emails can be sorted by sender or subject or date sent as required. This is a much required facility in gmail/apps.... until then our company cannot do without outlook.
PLEASE update the Gmail app for Android so that message threading can be turned off there too. Then I will be happy to switch to Gmail.
ReplyDeleteconversation view depends on the lenght of the subject also? its not working for subejct lengths more than 200 characteres?
ReplyDeleteI have not yet set up my Gmail but from just a few hours of looking it over it is obvious to me that the decision to use use either Conversation(Labels), or use Folders depends on what you are going to be using it for, Like painting...Sometimes you need a brush, sometimes a roller. In real estate I have hundreds of prospects and clients each month. In my opinion, just based on the little I have read, I do not think that I can even have that many labels (one for each prospect or client). Also, since there are so many cases of the same profesionals being associated with different prospects and clients, I think that conversations threads could turn into a confusing mess. I only hope that by turning off "conversation" that I can sort my emails while in the inbox by date, subject, or email address! It makes it so much eaiser to then be able to move the inbox emails into the proper folders. I am looking forward to trying Gmail now that Conversations can be turned off.
ReplyDeleteI have disabled Conversation View on my Gmail account, but I am not able to disable Conversation View on Gmail Mobile for my Blackberry Bold. As a result, my Gmail Mobile frantically goes through my Gmail messages trying to thread the emails. While Gmail is performing this threading, my Blackberry will not function: no access to emails and no access to voice. And the threading continues frantically for hours until my Blackberry battery is drained. Hard resets (removing the battery for several minutes) has little or no effect. Is there ANY way to stop Gmail Mobile from threading my emails?
ReplyDeleteI use Gmail Mobile to receive Gmails on my Blackberry Bold where the Gmails are integrated with emails received from my company's Blackberry enterprise server.The Gmails are separately displayed as well as displayed in an integrated display. Although I have disabled Conversation View on my Gmail Account, my Mobile Gmail display frantically seeks to rearrange my Gmails in Conversation View threads, and when it is doing this function, it seizes control of my entire Blackberry device which will not perform any other function. The threading continues all day until the Blackberry Bold battery is drained. Soft resets and hard resets (removing the battery for several minutes) interrupts the rethreading only momentarily, and then the rethreading again seizes control of my device. Is there ANY way to disable the Gmail Mobile from attempting to reorganize my Gmails into threads?
ReplyDeleteWould you please let us turn off conversation view on all mobile devices (Gmail apps, Gmail mobile website). Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would like to see is an option to make Conversation or List view the default. It's one thing to give 1000 users the option, buried in settings. It's another to set it up to be their default view.
ReplyDelete