Searching Your Inbox

As noted previously, Gmail organization is based on Google's popular search paradigm. That is, to find a specific message in your crowded inbox, you have to search for it.

Basic Search

For most users, Gmail's basic search feature will quickly and easily find the messages you're looking for. All you have to do is follow these steps:

Gmail now returns a search results page, like the one shown in Figure 21.13. This page lists messages in which the queried keywords appear anywhere in the messagein the subject line, in the message text, or in the sender or recipient lists. Click a message to read it.

Figure 21.13. Viewing the results of a Gmail search.

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Searching with Search Options

The more messages in your inbox, the more you'll need to fine-tune your mail searches. Fortunately, Gmail makes this easy with a simple checkbox interface. When you click the Show Search Options link (beside the search box), the top of the Gmail page expands, as shown in Figure 21.14. From here, you can search according to the parameters listed in Table 21.1:

Figure 21.14. Fine-tuning your search with Gmail Search Options.

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Table 21.1. Gmail Search Options

Search Option	Description
From:	Searches within the sender (From:) field only
To:	Searches within the recipient (To:) field only
Subject	Searches within the message subject line only
Search	Pull down to search within All Mail (including archived messages), Inbox, Starred, Chats, Sent Mail, Drafts, Spam, Trash, All Spam & Trash, Read Mail, or Unread Mail
Has the words	Searches for messages that contain all the words listed
Doesn't have	Searches for messages that don't contain the words listed
Has attachment	Limits searches to messages with files attached
Date within	Narrows searches to a specific timeframe (1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year) of the specified date

Just enter your keywords into the box(es) next to the criteria you want, and then click the Search Mail button.

Searching with Advanced Operators

If you prefer to do your searching from the search box only, Gmail offers a slew of advanced search operators you can employ. These operators work just like the regular search operators we discussed in Chapter 2, "Searching the Web," except they're specialized for the task of email searching.

Table 21.2 details the available Gmail search operators.

Table 21.2. Gmail Advanced Search Operators

Search Operator	Description	Example
from:	Searches for messages from a specific sender	from:sherry or from:sherry@example.net
to:	Searches for messages sent to a specific recipient	from:mike or from:mike@gmail.com
subject:	Searches for words contained in the message subject line	subject:meeting
OR	Searches for messages containing one or another word (OR must be in all caps)	sherry OR mike
-	Excludes messages that contain a specific word	-meeting
label:	Searches for messages by label	label:friends
has:attachment	Searches only for messages with files attached	has:attachment
filename:	Searches for attachment by name or filetype	filename:sherry.jpg or filename:pdf
" "	Searches for an exact phrase	"friday meeting"
()	Used to group words in a query	from:(sherry OR mike) or subject:(dinner movie)
in:location	Searches for messages in specific areas of your account: anywhere, inbox, trash, spam	in:anywhere
is:state	Searches for messages that are read, unread, or starred	is:unread
cc:	Searches for recipients in the cc: field	cc:melinda
bcc:	Searches for recipients in the bcc: field	bcc:oliver
after:year/month/day	Searches for messages sent after a given date	after:2006/06/15
before:year/month/day	Searches for messages sent before a given date	before:2006/09/01

Obviously, you can combine any or all of these operators. For example, to search within a certain date range, combine the after: and before: operators, like this: after:2006/06/15 before:2006/09/01. To search for unread messages from a certain person, enter this query: from:gary is:unread. And so on.