Living with Gmail Conversations

Now you understand Gmail Conversations, but you may not love them. Conversations are an adjustment for all of us - including ITS staff. Here are a few more tips for living with conversations.

1. Gmail groups messages into conversations based on their subject line. So, if you get three messages titled "Project," they will be grouped into a single conversation even if the messages are about three entirely different projects. To avoid this, use more specific subject lines.
   
   
2. If you are responding to an email message and do not want the response grouped with the original message, change the subject line in your response. Click the Edit Subject link in the blue section above your response.
   
   
3. As you may know, you can't label a specific message in a conversation, you have to label the conversation as a whole. The best alternative is to go ahead and label the entire conversation, but also apply a star to the specific message that you're interested in. In the future when you open the conversation, the starred message will be automatically expanded for easy reference.
   
   
4. In a conversation, if you see a green or orange dot next to a person's name, that means they are online in Google Talk.

Watch Google's Video on Conversations

If you have additional questions about conversations, call us.