To make it quicker and easier to follow a conversation, replies are grouped with the original message. This means you can see all the related messages together, rather than having them randomly scattered across your mailbox.
If you're not used to a conversational workflow with your email, please see below for an explanation of some key aspects of how conversations work.
- Replying in a conversation
- Conversations split into new threads
- Muting a conversation
- Deleting a conversation
- Deleting an individual message
- Turn off conversation grouping
Replying in a conversation
By default, when you respond to a message in a conversation, your response is sent to everyone included in the email. You can change this in your settings by following these steps:
- Open Settings → Signature & Compose.
- Click the Compose options tab.
- Scroll down to the When replying section.
- Under Default reply to, change Everyone in the conversation to Just the sender.
If you are viewing a conversation and you only want to respond to an individual sender, click the Actions button and select Reply to sender.
Conversations split into new threads
Conversations get split apart and form new conversation threads when:
- The subject changes. This usually means a new topic is being discussed, so a new conversation thread is formed.
- A conversation gets too large. When there are are more than 100 messages in a conversation, a new conversation thread is made.
Muting a conversation
If you're not interested in reading new messages in a conversation, you can mute the conversation by clicking the More button in the top toolbar and selecting Mute replies. Any further replies to the conversation will go straight to your archive, and will not show a notification.
Conversation grouping must be enabled for the mute option to appear.
For further information on muting, please see our Mute conversations help page.
Deleting a conversation
Deleting a conversation deletes all the messages in that conversation across all folders, not just the message you see in the mailbox.
This includes messages in your Sent folder that are part of the conversation as well.
If you'd like to only delete messages from the currently selected folder and not the whole folder instead, go to your Settings → Display options screen. In the Mail section, un-check the Delete grouped messages from all folders option.
Deleting an individual message
You can delete a single message from a conversation by opening the conversation, clicking the Actions button in the header of the individual message you wish to delete, then clicking Delete.
Turn off conversation grouping
If you'd prefer to see all of your messages separately, you can turn off conversations. Each message will be treated completely independently.
- Open the Settings → Display options screen.
- In the Mail section, select the option to Show every message separately.