# Hoe kan iemand die voornamelijk via e-mail wil communiceren deelnemen aan een lopend onderwerp?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [13 december 2020 om 17:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161 "2020-12-13T17:36:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/1 "2020-12-13T17:36:34Z")
If someone has an email notification for a thread, they can easily reply and join the conversation without switching to a web browser. But what if they didn’t get the notification for whatever configured reason? Is there a way to jump into a thread via email alone?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/2 "2020-12-13T17:38:39Z")
Try setting the Category notification level to Watching First Post on the desired Category to receive the emails. Then reply to those emails.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:39 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/3 "2020-12-13T17:39:30Z")
But what if you don’t have the email already?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/4 "2020-12-13T17:41:02Z")
Not convinced you read my suggestion carefully enough.
If you set that notification level you will receive emails for every new Topic in that Category regardless of your involvement.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/5 "2020-12-13T17:45:24Z")
Well, I read it again and I’m still not getting it. How does that help with a thread that was started when the user had that option turned off? I mean, short of having a time machine.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/6 "2020-12-13T17:47:25Z")
Oh sure you can’t go back in time. This will only work for Topics created after you set that and after 10 minutes of closing the browser window.
I don’t think you’ll find any way of doing this without having received a notification you can reply to.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 17:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/7 "2020-12-13T17:54:44Z")
With a mailing list, you can join a thread by looking up the `Message-Id` in an archive somewhere and manually editing that in. But that’s pretty advanced and not accessible to typical users anyway. I guess with DIscourse at least they can start a new topic and the mods can move it to the thread if appropriate.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 18:23 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/8 "2020-12-13T18:23:09Z")
> [@mattdm](#):
>
> With a mailing list, you can join a thread by looking up the `Message-Id` in an archive somewhere and manually editing that in.
By the time you’ve found the message ID on the internet you might as well reply on the internet too if the archive has that facility (which Discourse does).
Though I wonder - I think email replies to topics include a topic/message ID in the To: field. It would be possible manually to create that email address. And Discourse might accept it from the email address of a registered user. Maybe you could display the relevant ID to your forum to allow people to do this. Just thinking out loud.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 22:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/9 "2020-12-13T22:52:45Z")
The system uses reply keys. I don’t think you can spoof them and they are user specific:
> [@Reply key / email address check not working? (replies by email)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reply-key-email-address-check-not-working-replies-by-email/104507/6):
>
> Disabling that setting isn’t a good idea. Email addresses are always validated. Each reply key is bound to a topic and user. If they do not match, the email gets rejected. There’s only one exception. If the system knows that an email was forwarded to another user, because that other user was in the To or CC header of a previous reply, than it will allow that user to reply with the forwarded reply key. In your case, the user needs to send with the correct email address. There’s no way around it…
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [13 december 2020 om 23:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-someone-who-wants-to-primarily-interact-via-email-join-a-topic-in-progress/173161/10 "2020-12-13T23:21:45Z")
Would it be possible for a plugin to generate and display the relevant reply key - perhaps incorporated into a mailto: link - beside each post? There could be separate “reply” and “quote” links.
I’m not saying any of this is a good idea, but it would replicate some mailing list archive behaviour.