mind elaborating why that is desirable?

you seem to have ignored the issue template with your feature request. please follow it next time.

i got this question many times from diverent Customers, because they dont want the Threading feature, sometimes Emails have the same Subject but are not for the same purpose.

in Roundcube you can choose between the two options.
If you can tell me where i can find the part of Code for Threading, i can implement it like in Roundcube.

i read actually you do Threading in Backend, i think a Frontend implementation is a better Choice for this.

sry for the issue template

Any news about this...

No

Yes would be great to have this ! (i never used threading) Any news ?

mind elaborating why that is desirable?

@ChristophWurst Threading often causes issues like this:

Archived messages that are part of a thread often display like this.
Othertimes. the body of the email looks like this:

Just came across this thread after searching for my "missing mail problem". I couldnt find a mail i was searching in he Mail-app of nextcloud, but it was there in roundcube.

For me this threading is very annyoing and makes me avoid using the Mail app at all. Please add this feature so i can see all my mails chronolical.

Big thumbs up for this feature!!

OK

I check the mail app from time to time and want to add - yes, please add an option to disable threading!

One major drawback: with threading the UI does not use the available browser viewport but limit the display to a certain design with a local scroll bar inside the box which is used for the mail content:

In contrast: a mail without a thread just displays using the full viewport:

mind elaborating why that is desirable?

There are some people that tend to send a mail, containing the requested information. Then, a couple of minutes later, they send another mail to give some additional information.

There were multiple situations were I nearly complained about not giving me the requested information. In threaded view I don't notice the older mails, it is quite obfuscated.

I never got me to a point of using a threaded mail view in the past, I always switched it off. And I gave it a try - multiple times. It is just ... obfuscated, cause the mails are "missing" in the mail list! Additionally, especially the Nextcloud mail view displays the mail thread quite confusing, because there is no clear separation between the different mails - it just looks like one mail header.

There is another aspect: the timeline of received mails is not identified, easily if some mails are hidden from the mail folder view and displayed in threaded view instead. For me, the serial time of arrival of each individual mail is quite important - even if these are completely different mails.
What would you say, if your Tuesday would be placed above Friday in your calendar, because you worked for the same topic on Tuesday and on Friday? Some would say, this would be quite handy, but for me - thinking in a serial timeline - this would be a nightmare.

A simple case where threads won't work are web forms that submit the data to e-mails. Like the contact section of a corporate website.

Hi there !
Another case we represent with a group of users : we use Mail app for accessing a shared mailbox with ~10 people accessing it (all through NC Mail app).
The main reason we'd like to be able to disable threading comes from our way to manage the follow-up of each incoming mail, in a collaborative environment :

• given that we can't use the read/unread function as a reliable indicator as we are on a shared mailbox, we use tagging feature on it (like "to do" tag). Then we dispatch it to specific subfolders that are owned by different teams. For each team reviewing its folder (in its perimeter), we have bunch of cases where they forget to check the whole mail thread (and they only read the last of the thread), where we could have tagged mails awaiting to be processed.
  Ensuring the mail follow-up and processing would be easier and safer for our group if we can deal mail after mail, as a single object.

Hoping that it's clear enough, otherwise I'll share further details / screen-captures. Thank you !

We would like to follow the idea that a chronologically sorted view is possible.

For me thread, and the automatic classification, are huge problems. I spent time as customer support looking for "missing" emails. Please, allow disabling threading and allow to disable as default for automatic classification. As of now, mail app for me is unusable, and I have to fallback to different solutiions, like thunderbird installation.

Adding my voice here hoping that someone will take this seriously. The option to switch off mail threading is available in every major email client for a reason.

There is another problem:
moving a mail (that has a thread)

1. You move the mail to its target folder
2. Is is gone in inbox and is placed in target folder - everything seems to be fine
3. A few seconds later: it is back in the inbox!
4. wtf happened?? --> this is the next mail from the thread
   (lucky you to notice this now and not a few days later where your confusion would be even bigger)
5. Now you move this mail also to the target folder
6. .... same continues for every mail of the thread and you have to wait a few seconds between each of them! 🫨
   For some conversations it is normal to have many mails belonging to one thread. Important conversations. So this is quite a big annoyance.

Thanks for the example @nsk7even. How is this related to the request of disabling threads? With an email client that doesn't build threads you still get the follow-up questions into your inbox. Threading doesn't change any of this behavior.

So for nearly three years it has been requested to remove threading. I do not know anyone one in the four business (about 50 people total) that I take care of that use threading in their email. They all sort by date and if they need the thread, they pop it into search. So the use of Nextcloud Mail will never be used. I think the best solution is when Roundcube is fully integrated into Nextcloud, though they say that is not going to happen. For now I'm just using: https://github.com/rotdrop/nextcloud-roundcube/

Thanks for the example @nsk7even. How is this related to the request of disabling threads? With an email client that doesn't build threads you still get the follow-up questions into your inbox. Threading doesn't change any of this behavior.

@ChristophWurst Sure it does: you can select all of them and move them at once. No need to wait those seconds in between ... while waiting, you even don't know if there is another mail left! 😱
Also, there ist the possibility to clean the thread from "no-op" messages. All in all, you have full clarity and full control. In threaded view, there ist fewer clarity and limited control. Due to these massive restrictions of capabilities, it is best as optional feature for those who like this special kind of mail presentation.

I've just provided nextcloud mail the first time to a small real estate office and was searching for a button to switch of threading and found this conversation about it.
Just a quick question: is this something which will ever happen?
Otherwise I would just install them thunderbird instead of nextcloud mail, as I see end user confusion about this topic. Somehow automated replies are not part of the thread other mails are etc.
It's kind of generating efforts to explain users how it works and that unfortunately a simple list of mails is not possible.
Not sure how difficult that is, as it probably also requires a different internal data structure how to represent the mails from the imap server.
It is just a bit sad, if I see users to start to use workarounds by using other mail clients.
Somehow it gets obvious to me that in most of the cases you can't force users to change their approach how data is represented in their brains. Some people might think an email exchange like a conversation, others see emails like a list of message sorted by date when they got it. I don't want to teach people, I like to help them with tools which support their needs.

Makes sense, @tjareson. Thank you for the feedback!

The data structures wouldn't be much different. It's mostly how thread lists are fetched right now needs a second code path for "classic" mailbox listing. And the frontend also needs handling for both cases (right now there some spots that handle threads specifically, e.g. when a new message of an existing thread arrives).

We (Nextcloud Gmbh) will implement this feature as one of the Mail feature requests with the highest community votes.

I have updated #5913 (comment) with a user story and work packages.

The only thing not clear right now is whether the threading should be turned off for just one account in Mail or for all? Is there a preference? Obviously this only makes a difference for multi account setups.

My personal opinion would favor a general switch, as for me it is a personal and no topic related thing that I can't cope with this functionality.
But I assume that this is different for other people...