How to automatically add email threads to a Spreadsheet

Long email threads can be hard to follow. If your inbox is full of them, and the threaded conversation view in your preferred email service/client doesn’t help make emails easier to read, you might find a spreadsheet to be a better alternative. Reply to Sheet is a web service that can add any email, and all the replies sent over it to a Google Spreadsheet. You can then review an entire email thread in one sheet. New messages that are sent over the same thread will be added to the sheet automatically. Here’s how you can automatically add email threads to a Spreadsheet.

Email threads to Spreadsheet

In order to use Reply to Sheet, you have to add it as a contact to your email service/client, and it must also be added as a recipient in the email thread that you want to add to a spreadsheet. The email is; new@reply-to-sheet.com

Compose a new email, and add Reply to Sheet as a recipient in addition to whoever you want to send the email to. Once you’ve sent the email, and you’ve received a reply, check your inbox. It should have a new message from “New”. Inside, there will be an attachment with the same name as the subject of the email you sent.

Open the attachment and it will open in Google Spreadsheet. You will see the email address a message was sent/received from, the original message that you sent, the reply that was sent, and the date and time it was sent on.

Each email that you add Reply to Sheet to will have its own spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will update each time a new reply is sent to it. The spreadsheet might take a little time to arrive which is why you should add the email in your contacts to avoid further delay.

This service does have a shortcoming; your recipient might remove Reply to Sheet as a recipient in which case the reply will not be added to the spreadsheet. To work around this, you can add Reply to Sheet in the BCC field. Your recipient won’t know about the extra recipient and they won’t be able to remove it. The replies will continue to be added to the spreadsheet.

The service works great and the only shortcoming it has, if it can be called that, is that the spreadsheet takes a little time to arrive in your inbox, and to update. Other than that, it works great. If you have to use a ticketing service that sends replies to your inbox, this might be a pretty good way to keep up with the activity.

Using this service for sending/receiving sensitive emails might not be a good idea.