Advanced Search Operators to Find Emails in Gmail
Gmail provide advanced search operators to help you narrow your search criteria.
The query syntax is operator:search_keyword. For instance, you could say from:paypal.com to find all emails where the sender in PayPal. Use the logical boolean search operators to specify multiple search operators (e.g., from:paypal OR subject:invoice).
Also see: Gmail Search Tips and Tricks
| Search Criteria | Gmail Search Query | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emails that are either starred or unread | is:unread OR is:starred | |||
| Emails with specific recipients in the To or Cc fields | to:amit OR cc:aryaman | |||
| Emails received during a specific time period | after:2017/01/01 before:2017/06/15 | |||
| Search for messages older or newer than a time period | older_than:7d (for 7 days) newer_than:2m (for 2 months) older_than: 2y (for 2 years) | |||
| Search Gmail by size | larger:10M (for emails larger than 10 MB) smaller:1M (for emails small than 1 | MB) size:1000 (specify the size in bytes) | ||
| Email messages that are in a particular email folder (or label). | in:label_name label:label_name label:personal-emails in:anywhere (message anywhere in Gmail) | Find emails that have no labels applied | has:nouserlabels has:userlabels | |
| Find emails that have particular words in the subject line | subject:invoice subject:(invoice OR receipt) subject:“payment received” | |||
| Find messages that contain particular words | dinner OR movie (either words) dinner AND movie (contain both words) (dinner movie) (contain both words) “dinner movie” (exact phrase) | |||
| Find emails that have an attachments | has:attachments filename:pdf (search attachments by type) filename:emails.csv (search by file name) | |||
| Search for messages delivered to a particular email address | deliveredto:amit@labnol.org | |||
| Emails where my email is either in CC or BCC | cc:me OR bcc:me | |||
| Emails that do not contain a specific word | -cats | |||
| Find emails messages in trash or spam | label:spam OR label:trash | |||
| Find emails anywhere but in spam or trash | in:anywhere | |||
| Find emails that contain links to Google Drive or Google Slides or YouTube | has:youtube OR has:drive OR has:presentation |
Gmail Search - Things to Know
- Search for an exact phrase by enclosing the phrase inside double quotes. Capitalization is ignored.
- You can use logical operators like AND, NOT or OR to refine your search and they must always be typed in uppercase letters.
- Search for email messages by date using the before: and after: search operators. The date format is yyyy/mm/dd (e.g., 2017/07/15)
- You cannot use the bcc: operator to find emails in which you were blind carbon copied.
- If the label name in Gmail includes a space (e.g., Office Expenses), use a dash in the query when searching for emails inside that label (e.g. label:office-expenses)
Amit Agarwal
Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion
Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.
Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory
