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I would like for Thunderbird to show replies to threaded messages in with the received messages. Is this possible, even with an extension?

The desired behavior would be something like how Zimbra's threaded email view works.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 8 '09 at 14:08

6 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

GMail Conversation View does what you want without having to copy replies into your folders. Sometimes it doesn't properly pull in your replies, and it doesn't start conversations if you initiated them, but it is the most similar to gmail I have found.

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Combine this and gatorbrit's answer and I've basically got what I want. Thanks guys! – Colin Dean May 5 '10 at 22:01
2-year update: Switched to Postbox, has excellent conversation view. TB is still lacking in this (and most) respects. – colinmollenhour Jan 16 at 4:33
This plugin unfortunately makes significant changes to the Thunderbird UI going far beyond just showing replies in the same folder. – Jesse Glick Mar 7 at 16:19
up vote 10 down vote

You need to go to the account settings for the account and select Copies & Folders, then check the box "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to"

Also enable sorting by thread.

THis will replicate the gmail effect I think.

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Combine this and user30075's answer and I've basically got what I want. Thanks guys! – Colin Dean May 5 '10 at 22:01
This works but it goes against Google’s recommendations for IMAP clients (to not make copies of sent messages, sent GMail already does that anyway), and slows down mail delivery by a factor of two as the message is not just sent but also copied into your folder (including big attachments). What is needed is to just see the sent message in the folder, not to really copy it there. – Jesse Glick Mar 7 at 16:10
up vote 3 down vote

To view emails as conversation threads, go to View, Sort By, and choose Threaded, (Unthreaded to stop showing threads.)

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This applies to the latest versions of Thunderbird. Thanks! – Colin Dean Feb 22 '12 at 18:59
1  
This is not an answer to the stated question. – Jesse Glick Mar 7 at 16:10
up vote 1 down vote

If you set Thunderbird to place sent mails in the Inbox folder you can achieve it. This works great for me. I use my Inbox as 'ongoing issues'. So, placing the sent messages (that could be thought of a new issue or a reply to an ongoing issue) in inbox is ok.

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up vote 0 down vote

Yes, this Lifehacker-page describes how to enable it: http://lifehacker.com/264317/maintain-threaded-view-in-thunderbird

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While this maintains threads when sorting by other columns, it unfortunately does not show thread replies from the Sent folder--this is the behavior which I desire. – Colin Dean Nov 29 '09 at 5:05
up vote 0 down vote

Click on the header of the left-most (usually) column give you the threaded view.

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While this enables thread view using mail in the inbox, it unfortunately does not show thread replies from the Sent folder--this is the behavior which I desire. – Colin Dean Nov 29 '09 at 5:06

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