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  • Email conversations/threads...

    From TDH1978@21:1/5 to All on Fri Feb 17 23:30:19 2023
    Does anyone know how Apple Mail decides that email messages belong to
    the same conversation/thread? Is there an identifier in the raw source
    or the full headers that links these related messages?

    The reason I ask is that for most cases, Mail correctly lumps related
    email messages into the same conversation. But there are a few cases
    where Mail misses one or more messages (e.g. replies), even though they
    clearly belong to the same conversation. I looked at the raw source
    and the full headers of these "orphan" messages but I could not figure
    out why Mail decided that they do not belong to the conversation.

    Using Mail 16.0 on macOS Ventura 13.2.1.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From David Ritz@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sat Feb 18 16:27:50 2023
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    On Friday, 17 February 2023 23:30 -0500,
    in article <tspk8r$3t6ek$[email protected]>,
    TDH1978 <[email protected]> wrote:

    Does anyone know how Apple Mail decides that email messages belong
    to the same conversation/thread? Is there an identifier in the raw
    source or the full headers that links these related messages?

    The reason I ask is that for most cases, Mail correctly lumps
    related email messages into the same conversation. But there are a
    few cases where Mail misses one or more messages (e.g. replies),
    even though they clearly belong to the same conversation. I looked
    at the raw source and the full headers of these "orphan" messages
    but I could not figure out why Mail decided that they do not belong
    to the conversation.

    Using Mail 16.0 on macOS Ventura 13.2.1.

    Mail threading is generally based on the References headers of the
    message, which, in turn, is based on the Message-ID of message being
    replied to and the previous message's References.

    Message1 No References
    Message2 replies to Message2 References 1
    Message2 replies to Message3 References 1 & 2
    Message4 replies to Message3 References 1, 2 & 3
    Message5 replies to Message2 References 1 & 2
    Message6 replies to Message3 References 1 & 2
    Message7 replies to Message4 References 1, 2, 3 & 4

    - --
    David Ritz <[email protected]>
    Be kind to animals; kiss a shark.

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    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Calum@21:1/5 to David Ritz on Sun Feb 19 17:12:52 2023
    On 18/02/2023 22:27, David Ritz wrote:

    Mail threading is generally based on the References headers of the
    message, which, in turn, is based on the Message-ID of message being
    replied to and the previous message's References.

    It should be, although some mail apps (don't know about Apple Mail) do
    also look at the subject line and some other heuristics. Mainly this is
    because it used to be surprisingly common for email neophytes to start a
    new email thread by replying to an existing one, then changing the
    subject and recipients. So those apps try to be a bit smarter about
    starting a new thread when it looks like that's what was intended. (But
    also sometimes get it wrong, which is equally annoying.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)