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Apple Mail keeps reselecting "Organize by Conversation" and I'm sick of it

jimkingwood

jimkingwood

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
51
20
I've had enough of Apple insisting on organizing my email by what they call "Organize by thread". I hate this style and find it mis-leading and confusing.

Every time I turn around I have to go in and deselect this for all of my devices. This 100% totally pisses me off and this, together with the fruitcake AirPod mini and so-called "Home" "Kit" are moving me to escape the Apple environment. I've been here since the first 64K Mac in the 80's and I'm ready to move on after all these years.

I'm no longer happy with Apple products.
 
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I haven't found Organize by Conversation enabling itself, but I know what you mean when a setting gets annoying. If Apple products aren't what you want or need at this point, there's nothing wrong with looking at the alternatives. There's no gold stars for staying with one platform for a long time, especially if it no longer works for you.
 
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jimkingwood said:
I've had enough of Apple insisting on organizing my email by what they call "Organize by thread". I hate this style and find it mis-leading and confusing.

Every time I turn around I have to go in and deselect this for all of my devices. This 100% totally pisses me off and this, together with the fruitcake AirPod mini and so-called "Home" "Kit" are moving me to escape the Apple environment. I've been here since the first 64K Mac in the 80's and I'm ready to move on after all these years.

I'm no longer happy with Apple products.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by you have to keep going in and deselecting it? Both iOS and Mac have an option of turning this off completely in the settings.
 
hg.wells said:
What do you mean by you have to keep going in and deselecting it? Both iOS and Mac have an option of turning this off completely in the settings.
Click to expand...
What does it sound like I mean dude? I just went back into mail - I haven't so much as logged out of my mac - and under the view menu "Organize by Conversation" is selected again. This is the third tome today I've done this without loging out. This is error full stop

Quite a while back this was not necessary.
 
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WildSky said:
I haven't found Organize by Conversation enabling itself, but I know what you mean when a setting gets annoying. If Apple products aren't what you want or need at this point, there's nothing wrong with looking at the alternatives. There's no gold stars for staying with one platform for a long time, especially if it no longer works for you.
Click to expand...
And the thing is, it doesn't do it all the time. I'll go for a month or months and then all of a sudden it pops back up. And the problem is that Apple doesn't do a good job of this, the UI is confusing.

A person a while back told me that I just don't understand what Apple mail is going and how to read it, she came over to my MacBook to show me, and I've never seen someone so confused in my life.

Her: "See, this is the original message, and..."
Me: interrupting: "No it's not, it is the latest message, just now, look at the timestamp"
Her: "Well I don't see where you said what you think you said."
Me: "Dude. Click the 'See more' link more under the fourth message there."
Her: "Ok. I see it now. But wait. It shouldn't be collapsed."
Me: "Well, said you understand it and I don't"
Her: "Oh no, I never use this feature."
 
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jimkingwood said:
What does it sound like I mean dude? I just went back into mail - I haven't so much as logged out of my mac - and under the view menu "Organize by Conversation" is selected again. This is the third tome today I've done this without loging out. This is error full stop

Quite a while back this was not necessary.
Click to expand...
Trying to get more details, something is funky with your Mac if it’s turning itself on.

Also check under Mail > Preferences > Viewing

There are a couple of options in there, such as show most recent message at top, which is not turned on by default.

If that’s not selected the oldest message appears first.

By default, they are also collapsed, you can change that as well.

The column with your messages will always stay in date order, however as you change the above settings. It’s only the message view on the right that is effected by those.
 
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jimkingwood said:
And the thing is, it doesn't do it all the time. I'll go for a month or months and then all of a sudden it pops back up. And the problem is that Apple doesn't do a good job of this, the UI is confusing.

A person a while back told me that I just don't understand what Apple mail is going and how to read it, she came over to my MacBook to show me, and I've never seen someone so confused in my life.

Her: "See, this is the original message, and..."
Me: interrupting: "No it's not, it is the latest message, just now, look at the timestamp"
Her: "Well I don't see where you said what you think you said."
Me: "Dude. Click the 'See more' link more under the fourth message there."
Her: "Ok. I see it now. But wait. It shouldn't be collapsed."
Me: "Well, said you understand it and I don't"
Her: "Oh no, I never use this feature."
Click to expand...

That's a pretty funny and accurate conversation. You nailed it.

The only time I saw this happen (with the Organize by Conversation, which I normally have disabled) was after importing an .mbox. I can only think it was enabled for that folder and so flipped the switch for everything, but that's just a guess.
 
Go into mail>preferences>viewing and uncheck 'include related messages'

Also another thing to try is to deselect the 'organise by conversation' then use the rebuild mailbox function.
That seems to fix it in fact.
 
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Same thing happens to me. I keep missing e-mails because I unselect "view by conversations" and then forget about it, everything's fine, until a few months later I've missed e-mails and I go back and find it has re-selected itself, and the emails I haven't seen are there, just ridiculously hanging out in a place I will never find them unless I look specifically. Why would you do this, apple?
 
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solutionsfor2 said:
Same thing happens to me. I keep missing e-mails because I unselect "view by conversations" and then forget about it, everything's fine, until a few months later I've missed e-mails and I go back and find it has re-selected itself, and the emails I haven't seen are there, just ridiculously hanging out in a place I will never find them unless I look specifically. Why would you do this, apple?
Click to expand...
what I mean of course, if you haven't read the thread from the top, is that I like my new emails to show up in my inbox as new emails, not have to think "uhm, gosh, I wonder if any of the 25 people I'm talking to have responded to my most recent message, let me troll through each conversation and see". Why would Apple make "organize by conversation" select itself and without asking me about it?
 
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And here the solution - which I just found, thanks to this thread!

Mail —> Settings —> Viewing
Disable the following:
Highlight messages with colour when not grouped
Include related messages
 
Hey guys

Thanks to this very thread, I figured out how to do it!
Mail --> Settings --> Viewing --> Disable „Include related messages”

Cheers Howard
 
So this is old but if anyone ends up back here, I found where Apple moved the setting.
It's no longer in mail, settings, viewing, view conversations.

Now click on "All Inboxes" and go up to the menu tabs, to View, and uncheck "Organize by Conversation" and now none of your mail boxes will do that absurd and totally horrible conversation organization, that in reality just makes you miss emails!
 
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Rustygh is the only person on the World Wide Web that has the accurate fix for this global setting. Thanks a million!!! I've only been on the web looking for 2 hours for the right settings. Everyone else provided only an individual folder-by-folder disable setting or instructions that did not work AT ALL. All my folders and subfolders are no longer set to Organize by Convo. AND . . . newly generated subfolders adopt the disabled Convo setting. No more missed emails for me :D

In Mail app . . .
Click 'All Inboxes"
Click View in menu tab
Click / Uncheck "Organize by Conversation"
 
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