Knowledgebase

Can I disable the Conversation (unthreaded) View?

What is unthreaded view?

Gmail now offers users the ability to switch between conversation view and the traditional message-based unthreaded view. When you switch to unthreaded view, messages are no longer grouped together into a conversation, and each message is shown as a separate entry in the inbox. The inbox is still sorted in reverse chronological order.

How do you turn on unthreaded view in Gmail?

To use this new view:

Go to Gmail Settings (linked from the top right hand corner of the screen).
On the General tab, you will see a setting for Conversation View. By default, this is turned on. To turn it off, click on the button for Conversation View Off.
Click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. You can turn Conversation View back on again by returning to this setting and clicking on the button for Conversation View On.

What you will see

Turning off conversation view will reload Gmail in your browser, and you will then see the unthreaded message-based view that is sorted in reverse chronological order.
When you reply to a message, that message will be in your sent items and not bundled with the original message
You will always see the entire e-mail -- the older part of the thread will not be hidden in the “Quoted Text” link
Subsequent messages on that same thread will be separate entries in the inbox.