How to Forward a Conversation of Emails in Gmail

Email & Messaging

Updated June 20, 2019

In Gmail, when Conversation View is activated, all emails with a common subject line are listed together for ease of reading. Gmail lets you forward these entire conversations in a single message easily.

Share Interesting Threads

When you come across an email worth sharing, you forward it. What if you come across an entire thread or conversation of emails worth sharing? Do you forward them one by one?

Not in Gmail, where you can forward an entire conversation in one elegant go. If the thread forms a conversation, as determined by Gmail's criteria, you can forward it in one compact message. Quoted text is removed automatically.

Enabling Conversation View

When you have conversation view enabled, Gmail groups all emails with the same subject line (ignoring prefixes such as Re: and Fwd:) into one conversation. Gmail limits conversations to 100 emails. When a conversation reaches that limit, Gmails starts a new conversation. To enable conversation view in Gmail:

Conversation View is enabled by default on newer Gmail accounts. You can use these steps to ensure that you have it enabled.

Select the gear icon at the top right side of the Gmail inbox screen.
Choose Settings in the menu that appears.
In the General tab, scroll down to the Conversation View section.
Select Conversation view on to activate it.
Press Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.

If you set Conversation view off, each email appears in your inbox by itself in reverse chronological order.

Forward a Complete Thread or Conversation of Emails in Gmail

To forward an entire conversation in one message with Gmail:

Choose the desired conversation in your inbox.
Select More in the toolbar above the conversation. The icon is three stacked dots.
Choose Forward all from the menu that appears. Gmail will display the contents of the new email at the bottom of the conversation.
Add any comments you have to the email and address the message.
Press Send to send the whole conversation along with your comments.