I want to organize separate but related messages into groups, so they store them in the same folder, like a “Work” folder for work e-mails, a “Hobby” folder for hobby e-mails, a “Computer” folder for computer-related e-mails, etc.
I want to see conversations: messages are threaded together regardless in which folder the messages reside (except those in the Trash and Junk folders are excluded). There may be many related conversations I want to group together, or otherwise display separate of the noise of all other conversations. I like to see my “Work” conversations grouped together, “Hobby” conversations grouped together, “Computer” conversations group together, etc.
I thought about using tags to group conversations. I would assign a tag, like “Work”, to a work-related message which hopefully would tag all messages in the conversation as “Work” (instead of having to tag every message with the “Work” tag in a conversation). I would then use the left pane Tag → tagname to display only those conversations. See the image at:
https://www.emclient.com/sitecontrol/en/images/screenshots/emc_img_scr_blog_inbox_win.jpg
where you can expand/collapse the Tags section, and pick a tagname.
That might work to group conversations by tag, but is of limited value. It only works withing a single instance of eM Client. It won’t translate to other instances of eM Client, or to other IMAP clients, or to the webmail client for your account. Tagging and view-by-tag is a private function within an instance of eM Client. Tagging isn’t an IMAP function.
Gmail has labels which requires a Google-specific IMAP extension usable only at Gmail. eM Client supports the Gmail-only IMAP extension, so you can see the labels that got assigned in your Gmail account; see:
https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/imap-extensions
However, the only reason I have a Gmail account is to get e-mailed copies of texts and voicemail at Google Voice which don’t need to get grouped in a folder or by conversation. I don’t need nor want to see conversations of 2FA codes, voicemails, or SMS texts for messages that came through Gmail.
With tagging, and using the view-by-tag feature, if I mark just 1 message in a conversation with a tag, will the entire conversation show up when I use Tag → tagname, or just the 1 tagged message? That is, will the view-by-tag capture the entire conversation even if only 1 message in the conversation has the selected tag?
Also by using tags, I suppose I could add a Tag column to the message list pane to to sort conversations by tag, but I’d have to scroll through all the other conversations to get to those with the desired tag, and those would still be mixed in with all the “noise” of other conversations in the same list.
Anyone have another suggestion of how to group together related conversations? I can group messages in a folder which would translate to all other IMAP or webmail clients. However, I’m looking to change to using the Conversations view, and want to group conversations by a tag. I would prefer a scheme that translates the grouping into other instances of eM Client, into other IMAP clients, and to webmail clients; that is, I’m looking for an IMAP solution that would show grouped conversations in all my clients (eM Client on multiple hosts, MS Outlook on both desktop and smartphone), and webmail client. While IMAP has some flags, those are not for grouping related messages or conversations. Even after enabling conversation mode, I may still have to move all related messages into the same folder which is how I’ve done it in the past without using conversation mode.
Tagging might work to view conversations in groups, but only within a single instance of eM Client. I use eM Client on more than 1 host, and also use MS Outlook (for work, and also on my Android smartphone), and use the webmail client to my account (usually when traveling when my phone isn’t available, like it’s battery is dead, and the phone needs charging). Grouping related messages into a folder would work with all IMAP and webmail clients. Grouping by tag works only in one instance of eM Client, but it might be something I do anyway with eM Client on my home desktop PC.