Email Thread manipulation

[Flapjack]

I have looked at the Addons available in regards to Threads but they do not address the fundamental issue of being able to manipulate Threading.
By this I mean you should be able to:
1. Select an email and make it a 'Root' Thread so that subsequent emails in response (be it sent as a reply or received as a response) will treat that email as the beginning of the Thread.
2. Select an email and move it to be threaded to any email with an earlier time stamp. 
This could be an email already part of a Thread but it would be a 'branch' of that Thread. See screenshot attached which is from the Virtual Access email software.
3. Unthread an email from a Thread, so that it became a stand alone email, unthreaded and not a Root email, meaning subsequent responses will not be threaded to it unless the user chose to physically thread an email as in 1 & 2 above.
4, Any other Thread manipulation you can think of, provided 'Threading' is selected as being operational.
5. After 'Moving' or 'Copying' an email from one Folder to another, be able to manipulate the threading in any way mentioned above.
Hopefully this could be a functionality in the upcoming release of 'Supernova'
I feel so passionately about this that I would be willing to donate a couple of thousand or more $s if it fully came about as part of the app and not some addon which might fail with new releases.
Most of the above is a copy of a reply I made in the 'Discussion' forum regarding Threads.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Mohan]

I do not like that mails with same subject are bundled together . 

Is there a way to cancel this threaded option.

Regards, Mohan Mehta

[Flapjack]

Hi Mohan Mehta, if you give my Thread Manipulation idea a Thumbs up 👍  and more do the same, then if the powers that be at Thunderbird take note, you will have full control over Threading 😁 

[Michael77]

This is the answer to a query I made on 29/3/23. I regard some of the behaviour I have experienced with threading as errors, but I could not find a way of reporting errors. I did not realise there is an Ideas page and a Discussion forum. I certainly don't like threading being controlled by an add-on. I avoid add-ons as they can be harmful.

[scriptwork]

I'm using an add-on that manipulates mail threads by rewriting the References header.
Because of its limitations in terms of functionality, I can't let go of other email clients that support drag-and-drop email thread manipulation functionality.

https://github.com/opto/headerTools-lite-NG/issues/5 

So I am very excited about the possibility of mail thread manipulation in Thunderbird.

[DLB]

I've been donating forever and love Thunderbird, but absolutely hate the thread feature.  Mozilla, can you PLEASE make the threads optional so that we don't have to lose email and go through hunt, peck and search hell to try to find stuff?  Most people just hit return and write emails, even if the subject does not apply to what they are writing about.  It drives me crazy.  I don't want to do complicated add-ons or root manipulation to be able to use my email.  Thank you.

[scriptwork]

There seems to be a split of opinion in favor and against the implementation of the email threading feature,
I propose the ability for users to toggle whether or not to use that feature on the settings screen.

[Flapjack]

The option to opt in or out of threading was always an option.

Further more, the option is to view Threaded or Unthreaded at will.  The whole point of my idea is TOTAL control of Threading.

The Virtual Access email software has worked like that for 30+ years.

[Flapjack]

The option to opt in or out of Threading was always in this Idea.

The whole point of this💡 is TOTAL control of Threading.

The Virtual Access email application had this 30+ years ago. Apart from being able to move the Threading of a particular email (or Thread of emails) there are icons to view by Threads, UnThreaded and Chronological.

[JefferyS]

It took me awhile of looking how to move an email out of a thread but sadly couldn't find anything till I found this feature request. I'm sure many more people would like this but sometimes things are not easy to find and some call it thread view and other conversation view which makes it harder.

Anyway.

I had an email come in from a client that I haven't worked with in years and Thunderbird added that email to a thread that's two years old.

I would just like to move it out to the root and let it start it's own thread. Hopefully Thunderbird is smart enough to make a thread from the latest date instead of two years ago.

I found it odd that I could not do that. It just seemed like something that should have been put in there.

Thread view can be great but several times I've wanted to start a new thread because it got so long it was hard to read what was going on.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks,

Jeffery

[mikwit]

These are great ideas!

Threading of all emails in the folder sucks! But being able to thread single messages would be awsome.

By default I have threading off because it is much easier to handle emails by dates and threading messes it completly.

However I have used a threading function which became unavailable some time ago. Clicking right click on the message and "show thread" - this was awsome because I could easily reach and check all corresponding messages including replies. I miss this feature a lot and hope it will come back!

regards

mikwit

[Toolworker]

I support this idea. But mostly what I would use it for is (1) starting a new thread when I want to reply but change the topic, and (2) sending a new message to a group of email addresses by doing a reply-all to another message they were all on.

Both of these could be accomplished by having a change in the subject line start a new thread. It would be simple to implement. It could also be made a user option.

I've posted that as a separate idea, and suggested in that post that people also support this idea.

[MattAuSupport]

@MohanIt sure is possible to turn threading off.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-threading-thunderbird#w_changing-default-threading-mode

[Beau_Frederick]

I found this topic while searching for a solution to incorrectly merging some messages into one thread, even though they are not the same thread, i.e. replies to each other, but simply have similar topics. I would like to have at least the ability to undo the erroneous merging of messages into a thread (unthread) in Mozilla Thunderbird.