How many of you know about the Search Operators? Well, as the name indicates it is a combination of operators that helps users to refine their search query. These operators are text and symbols written in such a specific way to trigger the search engine of the select application. For example, I earlier wrote an article about search operators that work with Google Search. Now, in this article I am again writing about search operators but this time these operators are about the world’s most popular email application called Gmail.
Gmail sports a plethora of search operators and here I’m going to explain each and every search operator that is working with Gmail in detail. So, without further ado let’s get started.
A List of Gmail Search Operators
- Suppose you want to filter only those mails that you received from a specific sender, In that case you can use the from: operator. For example, Suppose you want to filter only those mails that you received from Arun. In that case you can simply type from:Arun or from:[email protected] in the gmail search box and the app will filter only those mails received from Arun.
- Like from: operator, there is also a to: operator that is used to filter only those mails that you have sent to a particular recipient.
- There are some conditions when we want to filter only those mails that have been sent to some select user. In that case, you can use the cc: and bcc: operator.
- Sometimes we want to filter only those mails whose subject line contains a specific word. In that case, we can use the subject: operator. For example, subject: website audit. This filters out only those mails whose subject line consist of the words website audit.
- You can also use the OR or { } operators in combination with other search operators. For example, Suppose you want to filter only those mails that you received either from Arun or from Sonal, In that case you can use the OR or { } operator as from:Arun OR from:Sonal. You can also write it in another way with the help of { } operators as {from:Arun from:Sonal}.
- Suppose you want to search for an email that is older or newer than a specific time period. In that case, you can use the older_than: or newer_than: search operators. For example, to extract all the mails that are older than 7 days in Gmail, you write the search query older_than:7d. Similarly, newer_than:2m filters only those mails that are newer than 2 months. To filter mails older than 2 years, you can use the search query, older_than:2y.
- There are some cases when we want to filter mails based on their size. In that case, we can use the larger: or smaller: operators. For example, suppose we want to filter only those mails that are larger than 5MB, in that case, we write the search query as larger:5M. Here, M stands for MB. You can put K there for KB and G for GB.
- Suppose you want to filter only those mails that are present inside a specific folder or you can say the label. In that case, we can use the label: operator. For example, label:family filters only those mails that are present inside the label name called family.
- There are some cases when we want to filter only those mails that contain any attachment like photos, videos, text file etc. Well, In that case has:attachment is the perfect operator. However, there are some cases when we want to filter only those mails that contain Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, attachment or link. In this case we use the has: operator with additional argument. For example, has:drive, has:document, has:spreadsheet, has:presentation.
- We can also filter mails in Gmail by its State, for example whether it has been read, starred, important, reminder and more. Well, In that case there is a list of operators which I think you can guess its operation simply by seeing its name. For example, is:unread, is:read, has:red-star, in:reminders, is:important, is:starred, has:blue-bang, has-nouserlabels.
- There are also some search operators that can filter only those mails that are present in some specific folders. For example, in Inbox, Chats, Promotions and others. In that case we can use search operators like label:inbox, in:anywhere, in:snoozed, in:chats, category:promotions, label:folder-subfolder.
- If we want to filter mails by people, we can use search operators like from: , to: , deliveredto: , from: , cc: , list:
So, these are all the search operators that are currently working in Gmail. To use any of these search operators you have to feed it in right into the Gmail Search box. Also, all of these operators are working both on Gmail for Android or Web.
Source: Gmail Help Center
