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When using gmail in 3rd party email clients (iOS Mail, Sparrow for Mac and Airmail for Mac), my replies are missing from threaded conversations. Take the following example;

  • Bill emails Jon, Sue and me.
  • Jon replies to everyone.
  • I reply to everyone.
  • Sue replies to everyone.
  • I reply to everyone.

In the above scenario, when I use Gmail in the browser, I correctly see all 5 emails in a single conversation thread. Unfortunately, when I use Mail on my iPhone or Sparrow on my Mac, my replies are missing and I only see 3 emails in the conversation thread. I have to go to my Sent Items folder to see them.

I have also noticed that certain peoples replies always show as single emails rather than in a conversation thread.

This seems like a recent problem. Is there a fix or setting I can change to make 3rd part apps behave like Gmail in the browser?

Note: My Gmail is from a Google Apps account. In iOS it's setup via Exchange. In Sparrow, it is setup with my Google account username and password.

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  • Maybe those third-party clients cannot handle threaded the way native Gmail does
    – Eight Days of Malaise
    Nov 2, 2013 at 18:05
  • When you later move back to gmail in the browser are all the emails correctly grouped in the conversation? If not, are the email subjects changed in any way when you reply using a 3rd party app? AFAIK gmail uses the subject to group emails in a conversation.
    – MrWhite
    Nov 3, 2013 at 15:57
  • Yes, when returning to gmail, the emails are correctly grouped. As I now understand it, gmail implements IMAP in a non standard way and also groups emails using the subject line. This allows gmail to show messages from my Sent folder in a thread when I'm viewing my Inbox folder. Other 3rd party apps including iOS Mail do not do this. For anyone interested, Airmail for Mac includes a Group by subject setting, so it behaves like gmail in the browser. Shame iOS Mail doesn't have the same setting although I understand it's a non standard implementation of IMAP.
    – robflate
    Nov 5, 2013 at 12:09

2 Answers 2

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(Asker apparently found the solution and added it as a comment. Copied here.)

As I now understand it, gmail implements IMAP in a non standard way and also groups emails using the subject line. This allows gmail to show messages from my Sent folder in a thread when I'm viewing my Inbox folder. Other 3rd party apps including iOS Mail do not do this. For anyone interested, Airmail for Mac includes a Group by subject setting, so it behaves like gmail in the browser. Shame iOS Mail doesn't have the same setting although I understand it's a non standard implementation of IMAP.

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I also had this problem while trying to migrate some folders including all threads from my private GMail account to my company GSuite account.

I found out that a solution to migrate all emails in all threads is as follows:

  • go to the relevant label/folder in GMail
  • click on the checkbox on top left to "mark all" and then klick "mark all in folder" (if you have more messages than one page)
  • click on the "labels" button an assign a new label (any label)

Now all messages are assigned to that label and you can use this temporary label to migrate all messages in that folder to another account, e.g., using Thunderbird.

Then you can safely delete the label. This is only useful for one-time migrations, but it is useful otherwise you never know if you missed some emails...

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