How to Forward a Single Email in Gmail

Forwarding emails is something done on a regular basis in most companies. It allows you to relay important information about certain projects or discussions without having to retype everything or copy/paste it. You can also use this feature to forward photo albums, trip info, and anything else you might discuss with friends and family, all while saving precious time. Forwarding an email can also allow you to retain your own identity while keeping an email anonymous. But forwarding an individual email is not as straightforward for everyone due to how Gmail structures its inbox. If you’re trying to forward a single email in Gmail, it can be pretty confusing. Let’s take a look at how to make this work in Gmail.

Forwarding Options

Gmail leaves you with many options when it comes to forwarding and replying to emails. The way the inbox works is that you’re able to open up an entire thread of conversations or emails that you’ve exchanged with one person over a specific topic.

Because of this mechanic, you’re able to do two things in regards to forwarding:

1. Forward all
2. Forward individual emails

Forwarding all the replies within a thread or conversation is something everyone should know. Simply go to the thread you want, select the options menu (the three-dotted icon) and click “Forward.” But let’s say you want to forward the third or fourth email in a conversation that has over 20 incoming and outgoing replies. That requires you to take some additional steps.

Once you know which email you want to forward, don’t forget that you can also add new information to it. You can edit the text, select one or more people to send it to, and even edit the subject or topic of the email before forwarding.

Forwarding Individual Emails

First of all, bring up the conversation that has the email you want to forward.

1. Go to Inbox.
   
2. Select the thread.
   

You will notice that all emails will appear in a list format. A short description of the first email will be provided, as will descriptions for the last two emails. If you want to forward only the last email in that list, follow the next steps.

1. Select the last email.
   
2. Click the three-dotted icon located next to the “Reply” button.
   
3. Select “Forward.”
   
4. Type in the contact or contacts you want to forward it to.
   
5. Click “Send.”
   

This is pretty easy, right? But what if you want to send an email that doesn’t show automatically as you bring up a thread? Here’s what you should do:

1. Bring up the thread again.
   
2. Wait for the list to load.
3. Click on the number located under the original message and the final two messages.
   
4. Find the title or topic of the email you want to forward.
5. Click on it to bring it up.
   
6. Select the three-dotted icon next to the “Reply” button.
   
7. Click “Forward.”
   

This is also quite easy until you have to sift through tens of back-and-forth messages. There’s another way to deal with forwarding individual emails that’s less tedious. However, it requires you to know some specific information.

How to Find an Email in Gmail

By using Gmail’s search box, you can find individual messages or emails within threads. This way, you can select them and use the previously mentioned actions to forward them.

However, in order to find an email this way and not get the original thread as a result, you should know at least a few words contained in the topic or description of the email. Using keywords and Gmail’s auto-complete function should make things go a lot smoother.

How to Tell How Many Emails There Are in a Conversation

Another way to figure out where the email you want to share is located is by looking for the conversations that have a specific number of messages. If you know that the email you’re after is in a particularly long conversation with an individual, look through your inbox at the number featured to the right of the sender.

That number indicates how many emails are in that thread. This can be a quick way to narrow down your searches if you don’t remember the topic of discussion or specific keywords that would give an accurate search result.

Find the thread of the appropriate length, bring it up, click on the number under the original email as previously shown, and then manually look through the emails to find the right one.

How Much Do You Use This Feature?

Here’s another thing that you can do with the forward feature. If you forget to CC a few people in an email, you can always forward that email to them afterwards, thus eliminating the need to retype the whole thing, attach files, and so on.

How often do you forward individual emails using Gmail? For what purpose do you use this feature the most? Let us know in the comments below.