Gmail Search Power Tips!

Search on your Gmail like a pro with these power tips! Ofcourse you could use the search options to do these, but learning the "keyword" options is plain faster and little more powerful especially when you want to find mails between particular dates.

There are few keywords that you can use in the search box you see above (appears when you load Gmail)

from:
to:
subject:
label:
after:
before:
in:
is:
has:

For the above, you could provide the following options as below

from:

from: {email address}
from: {name}

to:

to : {email address}
to : {name}

subject:

subject: {subject}

after:

after: {date in any known format} - For example : March 25, 10/10/2006, etc

before:

before: {date in any known format} - For example : March 25, 10/10/2006, etc

in:

in: inbox (Searches Inbox)
in: chat (Searches Chat)
in: drafts (Searches Drafts)
in: spam (Searches spam)
in: trash (Searches Trash)
in: anywhere (Searches All the Mail including Trash & Spam)


is:

is: starred (Searches Starred Mail)
is: sent (Searches Sent Mail)
is:read (Searches Read Mail)
is:unread (Searches Unread Mail)

has:

has:attachment (Checks for mail with Attachment)

label:

label: {label_name} (Checks in mail with Label name)

Other general options include

{search_keyword} and - {search_keyword} which means search for {search_keyword} or doesn't have {search_keyword} in your mail


Example:

Find all mail which was addressed to techflock before 19th Dec 2006 and After 1st November 2006 and has networking but not basic in the mail with IMP as label

Your search query would be

before:2006/12/19 after:2006/11/01 to:techflock label:IMP in:anywhere networking -basic

I use these filters to re-label (or delete) old mails. You could create Filters too... however, Google doesn't have the option to use before: after: keywords in your filter.