Gmail – Group different emails into one Gmail conversation

gmail

How do I group separate emails into the one conversation if they weren't already?

For instance, I email X, the manager at a client, asking something. Then Z, her secretary, replies with the answer. Is there a way to group these emails into a single conversation?

I don't want to use labels, I really want to group the messages.

Best Answer

Forward one of the e-mails to yourself using the subject line from one of the other e-mails.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the only way, and the e-mails you forward won't be clearly indicated as having been sent by the real sender (nice header with their name in colour), but it will work to get everything in one place.

Given these two e-mails, like in your scenario:

E-mail 1:

to Person 1 (manager, in your scenario)
from You
subject "Subject 1"
body "Body 1" (question, in your scenario)

E-mail 2:

to You
from Person 2 (secretary, in your scenario)
subject "Subject 2"
body "Body 2" (answer, in your scenario)

...to get everything into one conversation, you send this e-mail:

E-mail 3 (a forward of Person 2's message, with the subject manually changed):

to You
from You
subject "Fw: Subject 1" [need to override "Fw: Subject 2" with "Fw: Subject 1"]
body "Body 2" (answer, in your scenario)

(I am saying "forward" instead of "reply" here in order to bring any attachments into the conversation too!)

Related Solutions

Gmail Conversations – How to Merge Two Conversation Threads

No, there isn't. You can mute a thread, but you can't cleanly merge them.

One thing you can do: forward an orphaned email to yourself as a response to the thread you want it to be a part of, then delete the original. That won't force your sender to keep things together, nor is it particularly automated, but for reading/archiving purposes it may fit your needs.

Gmail not grouping messages with the same subject from Google Groups

As a bit of a spoiler, we tested this last night. I have two email address (which I will call for the sake of example "test1@gmail.com" and "test2@gmail.com"), and then we did this:

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test1@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  blah blah whatever

and additionally

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test1@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  this should nest under the other

and voila, they nested. No work required. And then we did this:

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test2@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  does this nest with the others?

And it didn't nest!

So in other words, two emails from the same sender with the same subject will nest. Two emails from two different addresses with the same subject will not nest.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gmail Conversations – How to Merge Two Conversation Threads

Gmail not grouping messages with the same subject from Google Groups

Related Topic