How to Search Better in Gmail

I’m big on getting things done, and searching through thousands of emails can sorta, kinda set you back. You can get things done searching quicker by using these easy search tips in Gmail.

How to use these

The first thing you all should know is that you insert these operators into the search box right at the top of your
screen.

Basic Operators

from:

What it does: Specifies the sender.

Example: from:John Doe would find all your emails that are from John Doe.

to:

What it does: Specifies the receiver.

Example: to:Alex Hwang would find all your emails that were sent to Alex Hwang.

You probably won’t ever need this one unless you have multiple email addresses controlled in Gmail.

subject:

What it does: Searches for words in the Subject line

Example: subject:Meeting would find all your emails that have meeting in the subject line.
This one is extremely useful because most of the time you remember subjects, because that’s what you stare at on the home page.

Basic Search Formatters

OR:

What it does: Allows you to specify multiple queries, matching term A OR term B

Example: from:John Doe OR from:Alex will give you search results from John and Alex.

-(hyphen):

What it does: Allows you to exclude messages from search, if you don’t want them.

Example: dinner -Amy searches messages that contain dinner, but not Amy.

” ” (quotes):

What it does: Allows you to search exact phrases.

Example: subject:”movie with Amy” will search for messages with the exact subject, movie with Amy.

():

What it does: Allows you to group words used to specify terms that shouldn’t be excluded.

Example: subject:(english science) will search for messages with both english and science in them.

These are some of the basic operators for Gmail. There are a lot more here, at Gmail Help. I hope I got some of you started in searching through your big pile of messages in your inbox.