I've been using Gmail for my personal emails for quite some time now. Google's email tool is indeed very powerful and often ahead of the others. However, among the poorly documented features of Gmail, there is an ultra powerful search engine…at the same time, we are talking about Google's messaging, the king of search engines.
Gmail has always had a search field to help you find your way around your emails. But what you may not know is that there are dozens of search operators that allow you to refine the relevance of the results. And frankly, you will save time when you are looking for an email from a specific period of time when you no longer remember the sender, but for which you know that there was a large attachment.
These search operators are classified into 7 categories:
- by size
- by attachments
- by date
- by state or status
- per file
- per person
- by content
These search operators must be entered in the Gmail search field with always the same syntax: operator:condition. Note that it is of course possible to combine these operators and this is what makes the system so strong.
Here we will see some examples of what is possible to do with these search operators.
By size
The operators in this category allow you to find messages based on their size. There are 3 of them:
- larger_than : for all emails larger than a certain size
- size : to find a precise size
- smaller_than : for all emails smaller than a certain size
The conditions to apply are file sizes such as 10mb, 3kb… These operators will be ideal if you are looking for example to make space in your mailbox by deleting emails that are too large. You will then do a search like “ larger_than:5mb » which will show you all emails larger than 10Mb.
By attachment
Also useful are the operators that allow you to search the attachments in your emails. There are also 3 of them:
- has: attachment : to retrieve all emails with an attachment
- filename:file extension: to filter all emails with an attachment of a particular format (e.g. filename:xls for all Excel files)
- filename:file name: to search on an attachment name (note that if your document contains spaces you can put it in quotation marks)
By date
Probably among the most useful operators, those concerning dates are 4 in number:
- newer_than : to find emails less than x days (d), months (m) or years (y). For example newer_than: 2d will return all emails less than 2 days old
- older_than : to find emails older than x days (d), months (m) or years (y).
- after: for all emails received after a certain date (in YYYY\MM\DD format). The specified date is included in the search.
- before: for all emails received before a certain date (in YYYY\MM\DD format). The specified date is not included in the search.
These last two operators are particularly useful since they allow you to specify a date range when you remember roughly when you received an email.
Surprisingly enough, there doesn't seem to be an operator to find emails from a specific date. To find emails from December 12, 2016, you'll need to type: before:2016/12/13 after:2016/12/12. If you have anything better, please let me know!
By state or status
All messages in your inbox have different statuses such as read or unread, have labels or can be followed. The following operators allow you to search on these criteria.
- is: unread : displays all unread messages
- is: read : displays all read messages
- has:yellow-star ou is:starred : to display all followed messages (with a yellow star)
- in:reminders : for messages deemed important according to Gmail criteria
- has:userlabels et has: nouserlabels : for messages with or without labels
By file
There are a number of operators that allow you to specify where to search in your Gmail folders:
- label : allows you to search through messages with a particular label. For example label:byothe displays all messages with the label byothe.
- in:anywhere : to search all your folders including spam and trash
- indraught : to search in drafts
- in:sent : to search in sent messages
- in:trash : to search in the trash
- in:spam : to search spam
- is:cats : to search your Gmail chat archives
- category : to display emails from a particular category
Per person
An essential tool for finding a specific email is searching by person. Here again, Google offers several operators:
- from:email@example.fr : to find all the emails from a specific sender
- from:example.fr : to filter all messages from a given provider
- to:Robert : for emails sent to a specific person
- to:email@example.fr : for emails sent to a specific email address
- cc:Robert or cc:email@example.fr : to show all emails in which a person or email is copied
- list:info@example.com : to display messages from a mailing list
By content
Here we arrive at more classic search criteria, but nevertheless essential! You will in fact be able to refine your searches on key words thanks to certain little-known operators:
- +word : allows you to search for a specific word
- "set of words" : to search for an exact expression
- subject: »set of words» : to search in the message header
- OR ou {} : to search on multiple criteria (this can be keywords or other operators)
- -word : allows you to exclude a word from the search (or another expression)
There you have it, we've covered the search operators you can use in Gmail. With all of these elements, you should save a lot of time finding your important emails. If you find other tips, don't hesitate to tell us about them in the comments!
Finally, to make it easier for you, here is a graph that summarizes all of this:
