Ungrouping a Conversation in Mail

I agree with you. As far as I can tell Apple Mail cannot determine which messages go in which conversations. This seems like a high priority bug.

Can anyone figure out why Apple Mail groups messages that are not in the same conversation? Is there a way you could build a plug-in so that it would look for some sort of conversation ID or something?

Thanks had the same problem what an awful feature this is. You open a message and you get an old email, and you have to sort through the whole "conversation" to figure out if something new has been added. Please remove feature apple! And don't ever get rid of the "classic" option. so confusing, the new way.

We're another 5 months on from the last reply in this topic and I'm here because I was googling the same thing, Mac Mail is grouping unrelated messages, by the looks of it purely based on the fact that the subject is the same. Did any of you find a solution for this?

Okay I literally made an account just to post an answer to this because it was killing me but I finally figured it out and I had to tell you.

Just go to "View" on the top and uncheck the "Organize by Conversation" option. You should also do "Sort by Date" in the View toolbar as well. That should handle it. You could also do this by each individual folder of mailbox so it's really customizable and great!

Hope this helps 🙂

YaserM: That does not fix the bug, that just hides it.

Yes, my conversations are grouped even though the subjects shares a few words, but are otherwise distinctly different.

I finally updraged to Lion (now that some of my most important applications are at last compatible). Is this issue resolved?

I am having the same issure, where Lion is grouping messages that are completely unrelated simply because they have the same subject (e.g. "here" or "look into this"). I'm not one for complicated subject lines, especially if it's just a note for myself.

This is a big issue for me! I had one email to my roommate about an upcoming party grouped with another email to my boss. What if I would have replied to all and it invited my boss to my kegger? How many double agents are now dead because Lion incorrectly replyed to all and blew their cover?? Okay, that was reaching... but still.

Is there any way to ungroup a thread, or train Apple Mail to tell the difference? I'm not sure if threading includes quoting in a reply, but it's still an issue in terms of trying to find and organize the right emails.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do!

I am having the exact same problem.

In my case, some conversations are grouped even though the subject is different. And unlike your example, the subject used is quite complicated.

Not really sure why it's doing this.

This is using Lion.

Just to add that I have exactly the same problem and I really think this could be fixed very easily if only a genius would help us...

I've been having this same problem since upgrading (errr. down-grading if you ask me) to Lion.

My team works on multiple projects at the same time, and I've trained them to be specific with the email Subject line in order to keep them straight. However, Mail will lump messages with the subject line "ASU Morph" with messages "OFT-900" just because they are from the same sender. I'm assuming that's why they're put into the same conversation.

These are completely different projects, concerning different matters, and need to be filed under their own project folders within Mail. Coudn't the conversation grouping just be based on the Subject line and ignore the Re:, Fwd: etc.?

I don't need Apple to try and guess my intentions inside the body of the message. Simply determine conversations based on the Subject line and be done with it.

I have the same exact problem. I wonder how nobody else noticed it...

I guess that most people either do not receive e-mails, do not use Apple Mail or just use it the way they did 5 years ago.

Since I use an Exchange Server for my work e-mail account, what I did was to use Outlook 2011 and it does conversations wonderfully.

Way, way better than Mail - I have one thread in Apple Mail with more than 100 e-mails, for more than 5 years for totally completely different matters... I don't get why they are all grouped together - On outlook, that thread does not even exist...

And we are now into Mountain Lion and I hate that it nests or groups which might be the better word, email from the same person on the same topic. I find that I am missing new email responses,or just can't find the ones that I really want, isn't there way to just undo this and go back to the good old school way of either manually flagging or colour coding the messages you want to link for easy searching? I hate this new feature.

I have the same problem and after all these months I still haven't seen a solution.

I really hope they fix this bug! You'd think they'd factor in who sent the message, and not just the subject line, especially when it's something generic like "here"

when you are in Mail sleect VIEW and unselect/untick "Organize by Conversation". That feature drove me up the wall!

That's not a solution to this problem.

While it might be a relief from these annoying errors, that's an "all or nothing" approach that turns off grouping altogether for every email. The issue is that we WANT to have grouped conversations, but we want them to be grouped correctly, instead of being randomly and mistakingly grouped just because they share similar subject lines.

I wish Apple could either solve this problem with improved algorithms for grouping, or by being able to manually group/ungroup specific individual emails.