Ask HN: Are there any tools to diagram long email chains?

14 points by VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago ↗ HN

It turns out that I have been missing some important background on long email chains.

When my directors have a 1-on-1 conversation with each other, then loop me in, Gmail threading mode seems to suppress the messages that I wasn’t a recipient to.

This has been an ongoing problem for me, but now I’m stuck trying to sort through the extra crumbs left behind, when recipients change on reply/forward and it’s starting to get really annoying.

Are there any tools out there to draw a diagram or organize my email chains in any better format?

5 comments

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HPsquared 4y ago ↗

This is called email thread visualization. Relativity have a product (I've not used it) which shows the email chain as a graph.

http://www.bgc.design/etv.html

alexvoda 4y ago ↗

That looks cool, but I do not see it featured on Relativity's website and their pricing page is the "contact sales" kind.

IOW, this is irrelevant for individuals.

leephillips 4y ago ↗

Yes, the tool is called mutt. Your problem is that you’re not using a real email client. Gmail is broken.

https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/

VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago ↗

Fantastic. I was vaguely aware of mutt in the 90s, but had completely forgotten about it.

replwoacause 4y ago ↗

Are you talking about something like this?

https://www.prettyfwd.com