Skip to main content

Find Any Email in GMail With Simple Search Commands

While some GMail users download email locally to Outlook or Thunderbird and then use Windows desktop search to find emails, GMail itself offers some very powerful search capabilities. Let's explore the most useful Gmail search filters and their usage:

Q: I have hundreds of unread emails in my Gmail Inbox but not all of them show up on the main page. Can I bring up view in GMail containing only unread messages.
A: label:inbox is:unread

Q: My boss sent me a PDF document last month that I can no longer locate in the Inbox. Can you help me find it.
A: from:Name_Of_Boss filename:pdf after:2007/07/01 [yyyy/mm/dd]

Q: I received an email from Paypal support last week. I am not sure if I deleted the message, archived it or marked it as Spam.
A: from:Paypal in:anywhere

Q: I have dozens of unread email messages in the Inbox but I am in a hurry to check them all. Show me just the messages that are for me.
A: is:unread after:2007/09/03 to:your.email@address.com

Q: Ryan is a good friend who send me pretty interesting PowerPoint / Word files that often have inspirational quotes, beautiful natural landscapes and funny slide shows of Cats. I love it all but they take too much space.
A: from:Ryan has:attachment [Select all and then delete]

Q. I accidentally deleted an important email message from a colleague. My GMail trash is already overflowing. How do I retrieve that particular message.
A: label:trash Name_Of_Your_Colleague

Q: I use GMail to automatically backup my WordPress blog. The database backup are stored via email attachments as Zips. Since I am running short on GMail storage, I would like to delete all backups that are older than two weeks.
A: filename:.zip before:2007/08/15 wordpress

Q: While chatting over Google Talk, Veronica sent me a link to her Flickr pictures.
A: in:chat from:veronica flickr.com

Q: Show me all emails from my Boss that he marked Urgent or Important in the subject.
A: from:Boss_Name subject:(Urgent OR Important)

Q. I have two contacts in GMail with similar names - Peter King and Peter King Junior. Can I see emails the received from the former contact.
A: from:Peter King -Junior


Search Shortcuts: Instead of typing label:unread, you can simply type l:^u

Important: Unlike Google web search, GMail won't suggest search results that contain plurals or misspellings of your search query. For instance, a search for "computer" will only show email with that exact word - you won't see messages containing the word "computers".

Popular posts from this blog

Learn to Create a Firefox Search Plugin in Less Than 2 Minutes

Almost every blog has a site search form where you just type in the search query and press enter to digg through the archives of that blog . The only drawback here is that you first have to visit the site homepage to locate the search box. And there's also a possibility that the site has no search form at all. This tutorial will show you a very simple Firefox hack that allows you to search any blog straight from the Firefox search bar without having to visit the actual blog . And there's something for IE users as well. Related: Firefox Search Bar Hacks First the not-so-good approach though it works with IE: Type the following query in the Google IE toolbar or in the Firefox Search Box with Google selected as the default engine: site:labnol.blogspot.com adobe captivate This query will retrieve all documents about Adobe Captivate on Digital Inspiration. You can replace labnol.blogspot.com with any site URL that you intend to search. You may have know the above trick already but i

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.