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16 Advanced Commands when Searching in Gmail

We’re sure most of you use the Gmail inbox for a variety of reasons: it’s convenient, it’s fast, there’s quite a bit of storage space, it’s easy to connect to other Google services. You can also connect to external plugins that make your email more professional.

In order to make an order in your Gmail inbox and especially if you have a large number of emails, you probably use folders and tabs and sometimes search the search box in your mailbox. You can perform a regular search in the search box to reach any text, but it’s more difficult to reach a specific email according to other parameters if you do not know how to use certain commands.

These commands, also known as operators, help optimize search in order to reach the most appropriate e-mail. These are all the advanced operators in Gmail.

1. Name of sender

You may want to reach a certain e-mail by sender name, you should use the from: command, for example: from:Danny.

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2. Name of the recipient

If you want to see emails by the recipient’s name, that is, those you send them an email to use: to:Natalie.

3. Recipients in a particular field

If you want to reach a recipient located in a particular field, choose cc: or bcc: commands, for example: cc:Natalie.

4. A subject of the email

If you want to access the e-mails according to the words in the subject line, use the topic command: for example subject:meeting.

5. Filters

If you want to remove some messages from the search results, you can use a minus before the word, for example: Meeting -Movie.

6. Messages with an exact word

If you are looking for a message that contains a certain word exactly, use the word before the word, for example: +Office.

7. Exact search

If you want to reach a particular text or insurance, use quotation marks, for example: “Business Plan”.

8. Command “or”

You can use the “or” command to get some results that include one of the conditions with the OR command, for example: from:Danny OR from:Natalie.

9. Messages with a label name

You can search for messages by any label you have typed in the email with the label command: for example: label:work.

10. Messages that include a file

If you want to reach messages that contain an attachment, use the following command: has:attachment.

If the attachment is in Drive, Documents, or Sheets, use the commands: has:drive, has:document, has:spreadsheet, or has:presentation.

11. Search by name or file type

You can search by file name or file type by filename :, for example: filename:pdf or filename:example.txt.

12. Messages with YouTube

To search for messages that contain YouTube, use the following command: has:youtube.

13. Mailing list

To reach messages from mailing lists, use the list command, for example: list:info@example.com.

14. Marked messages

If you want to get starred or important messages, unread messages, or read messages. The following commands should be used:

  • Messages marked as important is:important or label:important.
  • Starred messages: is:starred.
  • Messages read: is:read.
  • Unread messages: is:unread.

15. Notices by time period

If you are looking for messages sent by a certain time period, you should use the commands: before:, after:, newer: or older:, and in the date format yyyy-mm-dd, for example: after:2018/01/01.

16. Message size

If you want to reach any message that exceeds a certain size in bytes, use the size command: for example: size:1000000.

For messages larger or smaller than a certain size, use the larger: or smaller: command :, for example: larger:5M.