How to Use Search Operators in Gmail?

Google offers the biggest email service on the web – Gmail. We all use many tricks in Google Search to get quick results. However, when coming to searching emails inside Gmail, most of us are not aware about the intelligent Gmail search tools. So, if you are having difficulty in finding a lost email or important files in your Gmail inbox, here are some tips to use search operators in Gmail and use default search box to search like a pro. If you are also using Outlook, check out how to search emails in Outlook.

Searching Emails in Gmail

Gmail comes with free 15GB storage space with all features of an email client like receiving emails with attachments. Due to large free space available, many users setup Gmail but do not delete older emails to keep the inbox clean. This will lead your emails to grow quickly in numbers over the period and make it difficult for you to search older emails. Good part is that Gmail has a search oriented interface and supports bundle of search operators that can be of great help to find relevant emails. You can use these search tricks to filter and get quick results instead wasting time.

Using Gmail Search Box

When you log in to Gmail, the interface will have a search box on top as shown below.

Finding messages using the search box in Gmail is the easiest approach to locate related text in the search mail section. When entering the keywords, Google will instantly show all related emails containing that text. This search is based on names, email addresses and content found in your emails. Press enter key to get a full list of emails related to your keywords.

You can filter the result based on time, whether email has an attachment, exclude promotional emails and send directly to you (only in To field).

Advanced Gmail Search

For advanced search, you can click on the “Show search options” arrow on the right end of the search box. Alternatively, you can click on the “Advanced search” option showing below the search box after getting the results from the previous search.

Here, you can find queries for various searches like From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have, Size, Date within and Search. Through the advanced search method, you can easily figure out your emails by using the following queries:

• From – Search emails from specific sender’s name or email addresses
• To – for searching recipient’s addresses and names
• Subject – to search keywords in email subject field
• Has the words – to search body text containing the keyword
• Doesn’t have – to search for emails that do not have specific words in the text
• Size – find smaller or larger size emails
• Date within – filter emails for specified date
• Has attachment – to find emails that only include attached files
• Don’t include chats – to ignore chat conversations

After you are done with selecting the filtering criteria, click on to the “Search” button at the bottom of the panel to complete the search process.

Using Search Operators in Gmail

Although Gmail search box is quite simple and easy to manage, finding the required emails or files from in your mailbox can sometimes be time consuming. In order to save your valuable time and efforts, you can find emails with the help of Gmail search operators. Using Gmail search operators or commands allows you to search for messages, find emails sent to a specific person and search for required keywords without any hassle. Moreover, you can string together various search operators to achieve accurate results in less time.

For example, use the below query to get emails from James available in any folder and received after a particular date.

from:james in:all deadline after:2020/03/21

This will filter the results from different sections of your mailbox such as Inbox, Sent or Draft.

Summary of Gmail Search Operators

Here is the summary of search operators you can use to search emails in Gmail like a pro.

Gmail Search Operator	Purpose
-keyword	Exclude or ignore the keyword from the mails in the result
“keyword”	Search specific keywords within the double quotes
+keyword	Find emails with exact match.
After:date	Find emails sent on or after the mentioned date
Bcc:name	Find emails sent with the mentioned name in BCC field
Before:date	Find emails before the mentioned date
Category:name	Find emails in the mentioned category like Primary, Social, Updates, Forums or Promotions.
Cc:name	Find emails with mentioned name in CC.
Filename:name	Get the emails containing the given filename as an attachment
Filename:type	Help you in finding emails including a specific file type such as .pdf or .txt. You can use this in a format like subject:work has:attachment example:.pdf.
From:name	Get emails from the specified sender
Has:attachment	This search operator can be used to search emails with any type of attachment like documents, files or photos. For example subject:work has:attachment.
In:folder	Find emails only from the specified folder
In:label	Find emails with the mentioned label
Is:read	Find all read emails
Is:unread	Find all unread emails
Is:starred	Find all starred emails
Label:name	Find emails with the specified labels from the left sidebar menu or when using advanced search. We can also use labels to highlight important emails so that they are easier to find in future. Labels can be found through the menu button as discussed earlier. Additionally, Gmail automatically labels the emails depending upon the folders in which they are stored. We can also use the search operator for example from:james:deadline
Larger:size	Find emails larger than the specified size in Bytes, Kilobytes or Megabytes
Newer:date	Find emails later than the specified date. For example: newer:2021/03/23
Newer_than:time	Find emails later than the specified time mentioned in d (day), m (month) or y (year). For example: newer_than:3d
Older:date	Find emails older than the specified date
Older_than:time	Find emails older than the specified time mentioned in d (day), m (month) or y (year).
OR	Use this in the search box when you want the results to match either one OR the other text. For example, you can enter from:james OR to:mike. Instead of OR, you can also use {}.
Size:size	Filter emails bigger than the specified size in Bytes, Kilobytes or Megabytes
Smaller:size	Filter emails smaller than the specified size in Bytes, Kilobytes or Megabytes
Subject:keyword	Filter emails with specified keyword in subject filed
To:name	Get emails sent to the mentioned name

Below is an example of using multiple search operators combined in Gmail search box.

Make sure to use correct date format in date related search operators.

Searching with Labels

Using labels to group emails can help you to find them easily later point of time. For example, you may be working on a specific project and communicate multiple emails to the project team. You can create a label to group all the project relates emails and later use the search operators to find them quickly.

• On the top right corner of your Gmail window, click on the gear settings icon and click on “See all settings” button.
• Go to “Labels” section, scroll down through the page and click on the “Create new label” button.

• Here, you can create a unique label to simplify the email search procedure. You can also nest the label under a parent category.
• Click on the “Create” button and your label will be saved for future search use.

• You can customize the label options by clicking on hide or show options.

In order to use labels for searching through your emails, click the three horizontal bars “Main menu” button on the top left of your Gmail window. You can find the labels in the left sidebar, click on it to view the grouped emails.

Other Points When Searching Emails

• Gmail understands how a user opens specific emails and learns the response trend. Based on this pattern, the email engine automatically assigns the “Important” tag featuring a yellow arrow beside the sender’s name. This is called Google magic and you can filter these emails by using the is:important operator in the search box.

• Similarly, you can star individual emails and find them by searching is:starred operator.
• As far as we checked, Gmail search do not show messages from Trash or Spam folders in your results. You can search emails in these folders using the advanced searching option by selecting these options against “Search” dropdown. Alternatively, you can use in: operator to include the folder like keyword in:spam.

Conclusion

Gmail is certainly the best tool to perform daily communications for work, study or business purposes. You can remember some of these Gmail search operators in order to master your inbox and find the needed emails, file or pictures without any hassle. Managing your mailbox has never been so easier and with the supports of simple commands and techniques, you can now search emails in Gmail like an expert.