Find and organize conversations

Before you start

You need Inbox access and access to the mailbox. Editing a conversation’s organization requires edit permission. Search respects mailbox access. Company owners can access all company mailboxes, including private ones; private sharing is not a boundary against the owner.

Find the conversation and give it context

1. Open Inbox and select the intended mailbox and folder. Search for a distinctive sender, subject or phrase. Open Search tips for operators such as is:sent, in:inbox and has:attachment. Keyword search covers addresses, sender names, subjects, message text and summaries; has:attachment finds messages with attachments, not words inside those files. Use Documents search for a saved file’s content. For natural-language questions, enable Search by meaning and use words rather than operators.
2. Use client, project, category, Unread and Needs reply filters to narrow the results. Unread means you have not read a message; Needs reply is a separate follow-up flag.
3. Open the conversation and check the latest message before acting. Clear filters if a known conversation is missing.
4. Choose Organize to correct category, client, project or Needs reply. Pick the existing client/project that owns the work instead of creating a duplicate for a spelling variation.
5. Expand Work connected to this conversation to inspect linked tasks or events. Open each record to check its owner, due date and status.

Check the result and recover

Reopen the conversation and verify the intended client/project link. A category or Needs reply flag is not a sent reply or completed task. If messages have arrived but linked work has not, inspect analysis progress. Use Retry analysis only when the failed run offers it.