Google Mail - Advanced Searching

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...otherwise known as finding what you want when you want it.

(Updated at 8:58 am EST - less than 20 minutes after it was posted!  There is a change with the suggestions made during searching now that should show up for you soon if they don't yet. The addition is in a rust red color below.)

The number 1 biggest frustration expressed to me with Google Mail is finding an email.  There is a solution for this - the advanced search available that is hidden behind the little down arrow at the right end of the search bar:

If you click on that, you get this pop-up window -


Put the information you know in the appropriate places (in my example, I'm looking for an email from my husband, received during the 2015-2016 school year about evaluations but I don't know what the subject line was) -

THEN run your search, and you should see better results (in my example, here is the email I was looking for) -

The following field are what you can search:

  1. From: the email of the person that sent the email (could even be you)
  2. To: the email of the person the email was sent to (could even be you)
  3. Subject: word(s) in the subject of the email
  4. Has the words: word(s) that can be anywhere in the email (subject, body)
  5. Doesn't have: word(s) to exclude in the search
  6. Size: email size (can be established as greater than or less than a specific size)
  7. Date within: date within a range (from 1 day to year) from a specific date
  8. Search: which labels to search (All Mail will search all)
  9. Has attachment: looks only for mails with attachments
  10. Don't include chats: will disregard chats
#11 of Create filter is a bit different.  It is not part of the search, but rather a way to create a filter on the fly if it is something you search for often.  It is an option here.

You can use as many or as few of the fields as you would like. You may notice after you perform the search that there IS a way to type it into the search bar, but I think it is just as easy to use the little arrow to get there.

There has been an updated to my search this morning!  Now when you do a general search in the search bar, you get suggestions that activate advanced search options:

At the end of the suggestions is another way to access the advanced search window (sorry it is hard to see with my theme - it says Advanced Search):

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