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How can we improve Proton Mail?

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Add Conversation Threads

Conversation threading is distinct from conversation grouping, which is currently implemented. The way I understand it, conversation grouping groups messages together based on the sender and subject line. This means that emails with the same subject line that are a month apart (like bill notifications) get grouped together. This is not at all what I want.

Conversation threading, however, threads together messages based on the "In-Reply-To" header lines so it only groups messages that belong to the same thread. In this way, bill notification messages do not get "grouped" together, because each notification email belongs to a different "thread". Message conversations that utilize "reply" and "forward" are grouped together in the same thread, which is the behavior that I want.

In my opinion, "Conversation Grouping" tries to be smart and does unexpected things, whereas "Conversation Threading" is a dumb algorithm but does exactly what I would expect.

I see "Conversation Grouping" and "Conversation Threading" as mutually exclusive options, as the way messages are displayed would be the same* for both options, but the algorithm for determining which messages get grouped together is different.

*Actually, "Conversation Threading" can even be displayed better than "Conversation Grouping" as you should be able to tell which message was replied to for each message if the UI presents the connectivity of messages rather than just being flat (see Thunderbird for example).

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  • Kevin commented  ·   ·  Report

    It is unfortunate that the emails are grouped in a such hard to use way.

  • B B commented  ·   ·  Report

    Would love this. With Gmail (which I am moving from) the archived emails with similar subjects or previous emails on the subject show up even if archived. If I archive it I'd love for it to not show up in the thread. Having some deeper search here would be beneficial.

    I know this is older but I dont' think I've seen a fix or update here.

  • G Harry Franklin commented  ·   ·  Report

    Could this not be a selectable option, so those who need it or want can and others have the option

  • Enrico commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes please implement this. Current implementation of conversation grouping is pretty useless for me or even more an annoyance than helping with anything. Also let me allow to define if new messages should be on top or bottom.

  • beefhooker commented  ·   ·  Report

    After my import from gmail completed, I discovered that a large amount of my existing conversation threads were disconnected from each other, making it unusable for me. I love so many things about Proton, but unfortunately I will not be able to fully switch over until this is addressed.

  • Chris commented  ·   ·  Report

    After testing for a month, this drove me away from using Proton. It defies belief that people have explained in clear and simple terms how to do the product correctly (i.e., how every other email provider does it) and Proton have done nothing about it. They surely use their own product so they must see how annoying conversations are. Until now they didn't have much competition in the E2EE space but now they do, and the competitor handles conversations the correct way.

  • CC commented  ·   ·  Report

    yes yes yes. grouping should only be for messages that are directly related to the other by a reply. It should not group all messages that simply have the same subject.

  • Alex commented  ·   ·  Report

    The lack of this feature is the only thing that keeps me from switching to proton since years. :(

  • Julien commented  ·   ·  Report

    The actual implementation of conversation groupping is buggy with presented with mailing lists that modify the subject, like:

    [Python-Dev] Python multithreading without the GIL
    and
    [Python-Dev] Re: Python multithreading without the GIL

    making it very frustrating if not unusable.

    Protonmail support tells me: « this is indeed how the conversation grouping feature works ».

    I'm infuriated.

  • EE commented  ·   ·  Report

    +3 to this. My dilemma is either I miss emails in conversation view, or my inbox is a mess in linear view. This will drive me away too, eventually.

  • Jereme commented  ·   ·  Report

    I completely agree. The lack of this feature is what will ultimately drive me away from PM.

  • Stephan commented  ·   ·  Report

    +1 to this one. Threading is severely lacking. Is there a shortcut to jump to the next message within that grouping? I couldn't even find that.

  • Tim commented  ·   ·  Report

    This fix would really clean up my inbox. Right now, I'm having to search through each email individually to see who I've replied to, where our conversation left off... it's really getting messy and the folders only help to a point (I'm basically building my own threads through folders - not fun). "Conversation Threading" would help immensely.

    Also, because I have people emailing me from my website, they all have the same subject line. I need to be able to organized the conversations by the sender at the very least. For example, I have 100 emails from 50 different people mixed under one thread. It makes it hard work to organize.

    If this got sorted, I would move my gmail to Proton mail.

  • Erich commented  ·   ·  Report

    For a really good description of what is wanted, scroll down to the section titled "Why use Mutt?" on this LWN article: https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/

    I'll note that in my experience Thunderbird also correctly displays threaded conversations.

  • Jonas commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree. I really miss this feature. Just having "dumb" filtering on sender and subject is not producing the desired result. Examples:

    Invoices sent with subject "Invoice from *name of club* " will be grouped as a single thread, making it very difficult to find the latest invoice (especially when combined with a search function that does separate trashed messages in the result (https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/suggestions/39908797-filter-out-exclude-trashed-emails-from-searches))

    My kids teacher sends out weekly reports on what's the class has been up to. The subject is (translated) "Weekly letter #24". The current filter will group the new message with the one, completely unrelated, sent one year ago.

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