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The problem with conversation-view is that it breaks the simple chronology of e-mail. If I want to look at an e-mail that I remember receiving last Friday, I h

The problem with conversation-view is that it breaks the simple chronology of e-mail. If I want to look at an e-mail that I remember receiving last Friday, I have to scan through my "conversations" until I recognize the correct subject for that particular conversation which will appear in a seemingly random order, depending on the last time I replied or received a reply. Maybe I'm a "foot-dragging improvement hater" but it's much easier for me to remember "e-mail from Fred last Friday" and to find that by going to last Friday and looking for "Fred" than it is to remember the last time the conversation was updated.

txxxxd 16y ago
Just click "show search options" and enter "Fred" in the from box and "Friday" in the date box. Much easier than scanning through pages and pages of messages.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  That's a fair point. But nowadays OS'es all have good search tools (e.g. SpotLight in OS X) which makes it unnecessary to organize your files ("why organize when you can search"?). However, I still like my files organized so I can browse them to find things in a straightforward way. So, too, with e-mail.
boredguy8 16y ago
I enjoy not having to mentally catalog any dates on my messages. "email from Fred last Friday, or the one from a little earlier that day, or was it maybe the day before" is far closer to my mental time map if I were to try and catalog that day. I remember topics way more than I remember dates, and most people are similar. "from:fred feature timeline" is going to be a FAR faster search than would paging through screens of email. Most 'knowledge workers' process 150 emails a day, on average. Expending any effort to track that seems silly to me. Also, simply doing "from:Fred" will list, in the results thread, the date of the message from Fred, even if activity has happened in the thread since then. It _also_ has the benefit of, once clicked on, letting you see that Sue followed up an hour ago to mention she took care of the issue. Going through e-mail chronologically, who knows how much time you could have spent on that before you reached the "all taken care of" message?

txxxxd 16y ago

Just click "show search options" and enter "Fred" in the from box and "Friday" in the date box. Much easier than scanning through pages and pages of messages.

roadnottaken 16y ago
That's a fair point. But nowadays OS'es all have good search tools (e.g. SpotLight in OS X) which makes it unnecessary to organize your files ("why organize when you can search"?). However, I still like my files organized so I can browse them to find things in a straightforward way. So, too, with e-mail.

boredguy8 16y ago

I enjoy not having to mentally catalog any dates on my messages. "email from Fred last Friday, or the one from a little earlier that day, or was it maybe the day before" is far closer to my mental time map if I were to try and catalog that day. I remember topics way more than I remember dates, and most people are similar. "from:fred feature timeline" is going to be a FAR faster search than would paging through screens of email. Most 'knowledge workers' process 150 emails a day, on average. Expending any effort to track that seems silly to me. Also, simply doing "from:Fred" will list, in the results thread, the date of the message from Fred, even if activity has happened in the thread since then. It _also_ has the benefit of, once clicked on, letting you see that Sue followed up an hour ago to mention she took care of the issue. Going through e-mail chronologically, who knows how much time you could have spent on that before you reached the "all taken care of" message?