Group emails into conversations

You can choose whether replies to emails are grouped in conversations or if each email is displayed in your inbox separately. 

Note: To learn how to customise Gmail to look like Outlook, visit section 2 of the Learning Centre.

Choose your conversation settings

When people reply to an email, Gmail groups the responses together in conversations with the newest email at the bottom.

A conversation breaks off into a new conversation if the subject line changes or the conversation reaches more than 100 emails.

1. Open Gmail.
2. In the top right, click Settings   See all settings.
3. Scroll down to the 'Email threading' section.
4. Tick or untick the box for Conversation view.

 

 

How Gmail groups automated emails

Important: Emails are grouped when your conversation view setting is turned on.

If you manage a system that sends automated email notifications to a group of people, Gmail might automatically group them into the same conversation. 

Emails are grouped if each message meets the following:

• The same recipients, senders or subject as a previous message
• A reference header with the same IDs as a previous message
• Sent within one week of a previous message

To prevent grouped emails:

• Create a new subject for each message that you don’t want to group.
• Send each message with a unique reference header value that doesn’t match a previous message.