iOS 10 Mail app - threads are impossible to read with Outlook-style reply-all (no quoting)

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With my job, I get/reply to 100s of emails a day and many of those are deep email threads. The iPhone IOS9 email threading allowed me to move very quickly through them and manage entire engineering development teams - reading, replying, deleting individual mails that may/may not be branched from the original thread. The many replies to this original question sum up all the things that are wrong with this new threading design that makes it a poor user experience for heavy email users. I have been a loyal iPhone customer from its inception, and this isthe single most negative impact to my job over any other changes they have made.

I have since reverted back to IOS 9.3.5 due to this poor design decision. I have been waiting for Apple to restore some/all of the <= IOS 9 email threading design, and haven't been able to take anymore SW updates -or- upgrade to an iPhone 7 as it will come with IOS10. On every new IOS release, I troll the web looking for an indication that Apple added a selection for IOS 9 threading style, and all the while I delete the incoming SW update files as they appear in the storage menu. If i get stuck with an update, it will simply cripple my mobile effectiveness at work as it would tie me to a Outlook PC to move through my mail.

For the first time in nearly 10 years, I am no longer a happy iPhone customer and I'm disheartened that I may be forced to look for a different phone 😟.

I rely on email to get jobs and I have lost so many jobs to the unreliablity of the iPhone that I am forced to never use it again, this will be my last iPhone ever due to the email app. I have everything mac and will also be switching to PC due to apple continually dropping the ball on their apps.

Itunes has become the most annoying app ever also, I don't know what happened at apple after they lost Steve Jobs but they are literally the worst tech on the market these days.

100% behind you! Please Apple, can we have an option to do threads as they were in iOS 9? That was actually a helpful feature. In iOS 10 it's completely impossible/ very time consuming!

Even if the quirks were worked out and e-mails would collapse properly it's still not very helpful when you have long threads (which when you use mail app for work e-mails can happen during the course of just a single day with 20-30+ e-mails).

Clearly no one tested with an email server that quotes all replies in a thread. It now takes numerous paging up or down of the screen to be able to simply get to a message header in the thread to do some action on it, e.g. file or delete. The separators are not very obvious in this situation either. At least there is an option to sort them with last in on top. I guess it is time to use Outlook for iOS. It does the same threading treatment, but at least the message is not fully expanded from the start. You only see the reply text, not the full thread, though that makes it hard to see inline comments within the original message. I used the iOS email largely because of the way pre-iOS 10 supported threading display. It made it easy to delete unneeded messages in the thread and keep those with attachments and such. Please give an option for that display again!

Not much more to be said. I have the same issues with the new E-Mail app. Please add an option to toggle the thread view and restore it to the previous implementation.

THis really is bad. My corporate exchange account is now unusable with threads on. Turning it off right now 😠

So, quit using a 3rd party mail client,

The only partial workaround I discovered: in the highest level of your list of emails (in other words, your main message list before you've opened a message), whenever there is more than 1 email in a conversation (or thread) you should see a blue double arrow all the way to the right in that message. If you click that, the list of individual emails in the thread will open below the first message. It would be nice if those individual emails were somehow demarcated (e.g., indented) below the "parent" message, and they aren't. But at least it's better than scrolling through open msgs in search of the one you're seeking.
I too would greatly prefer if Apple just put it back as it was in iOS9.

Great tip, much appreciated. This helps at least ease the pain somehow. The implementation of this feature up to ios9 however was the best and I also would prefer that to this "workaround" any time. It's a shame Apple seems to change more and more "good enough" features for "better ones" that noone requests.

Second yours and AEX9000's notion that it would be much preferred if Apple would bring back the iOS9 approach, however, this is definitely a very welcome tip and a significant improvement on the "standard" way of opening threads in iOS10. A little frustrating generally with all these small amendments that are made where users will have to guess how the system now works

Anyway - thanks again!

Thanks for the tip. That provides a similar view to the Windows 10 email and allows for the main feature I wanted which is to easily delete older messages in a thread that I no longer want that do not have attachments. I was happy to see that the attachments paperclip is shown in the condensed view. It really was not obvious that the >> was more than an indicator, but now happy to learn it is a control to show the headers of the thread.

To take this a step further: Let's say the original email had an attachment and there are numerous replies from various people. I see the double blue arrows which theoretically should expand the thread to show all of the emails....but it doesn't....consistently. Meaning: If I replied to one of the replies in the thread, but not the first, it will show me only those emails and I can't seem to get back to the original email with the attachment. The only way I've been able to find it is by doing a search for the original sender and THEN I'll find the email. If I've not responded to any of the emails the thread remains fine.

Not a fan.

Thanks for the hint, I did not notice there was this expand option with the blue arrows. much better to use those arrows than just open the email in a complete message format. There could be the option anyway to click on the main message and see as before a list of the answers (including our own answers) As it was on the iOS 9.

I regret the update of IOS 10 due to the unnecessary changes on email features. The font sizes are too small whenever I'm reading the received html mail and font size cannot be adjusted totally from iphone setting. Mail app is one of my most important app used in iphone and the font is helpful to me on previous ios, but now it totally *****!!! Hopefully this can be fixed on the next update.

Same problem here with Outlook. The problem is so bad that we've had email responses go out to wrong people (happened to me !) And we've been officially asked to turn threading off. Apple, BRING BACK THE OLD THREADING!!

If it ain't broken, don't fix it!