Gmail – What’s the difference between replying to someone else and forward in Inbox / Gmail

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This is about Google Inbox / Gmail.

When someone sends me a mail, and I wish to forward it to a third person, does it make any difference if, instead of forwarding it, I press reply, empty the To and CC fields, and then add the ID of the person I want to send it to?

In both cases:

  • The mail I send is threaded in the same conversation.
  • The recipient of my mail can't reply to the others in the thread (only to me).
  • The sender or people CC'ed in the original discussion don't know that I've shared the information with a third person.

So, it looks like there's no difference between reply and forward. Correct?

Best Answer

No, there really isn't much difference. The main feature of "reply" is that it auto-populates the "to:" field (and sometimes the "cc:" field, if you've chosen "reply all") for you. (The reply-to: header is used, if it exists.)

There may be some differences in the headers that some email clients might pick up on, but Gmail (and, by extension, Inbox) doesn't. As you've noticed, it keeps both replies and forwards in the same conversation.

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