If you’ve ever forwarded a long email thread in Gmail, you know it can look a bit confusing and cluttered. The little-known “Forward all” function in Gmail makes forwarded emails much clearer and easier to read.

Forward

Here’s a message with multiple replies within a single thread. If you wanted to forward the entire chain, you’d probably just hit “Forward,” right?

And your recipient would get something that looks like this:

The recipient has to scroll all the way to the bottom to start from the beginning of the conversation, and each message is indented, making it hard to read.

The “Forward all” function makes forwarding email chains much clearer. While “Forward” is great for single messages, try using “Forward all” for long email threads.

Forward All

If you use the “Forward all” function, all the messages from the email thread are put into a single message. They’re also listed in chronological order, going from oldest to most recent (top to bottom), so you can read and understand the conversation much more easily. They will also have a very clear “Forwarded conversation and subject line” added.

To use this function, instead of hitting Forward like you usually do, you need to head up to More > Forward all. 

Your recipient will get a message that looks like this, which is much easier to read:

The “Forward all” function is a great way to pass along long and convoluted threads to a third party while making it easy for them to track the flow of the conversation.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.