This article will help you to search your mailbox based on criteria.  You can use this table of contents to jump to a specific topic:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Basic Keyword Search
  • Keyword Phrases
• Sender/Recipient Search
  • Search by Sender
  • Search by Recipient
    • Limit to "from me"
  • Quick Reference
• Advanced Keyword Search
  • Subject
  • Boolean Search (AND/OR/NOT)
    • OR
    • AND
    • NOT (omit)
  • Quick Reference
• More Search Operators
  • Labels
  • Special Folders
  • Message Markings
  • Age

Basic Keyword Search

You might already be familiar with using the search bar to search for keywords, like an email address or a word or phrase that might appear in the email itself.

In the search bar at the top of your mailbox, type the word(s) or email address you are looking for and press Enter.

NOTE: Gmail will search on word variations.  For example, if you are searching for security, any email with security, secure, or secured would be in the search results.

Click on an email to view the message.  When done, click on the back arrow to return to the search results:

Click on the X to the right of the search words to clear the search results (when finished):

Keyword Phrases

If you are searching for more than one word, each word will be searched independently.  For example, if you are searching for free pizza, you will get results that have the word free and results that have the word pizza.  

If you are searching for a phrase, surround the phrase in quotes.

"free pizza"

"Acme Painting"

"New Orleans"

Sender/Recipient Search

Sometimes a keyword can return a lot of messages that are not what you are looking for.  You can use Operators to help refine your search.

In this example, searching on the word Compliance lists email with the word "compliance" in the body, in addition to emails that were sent by the Compliance mailbox.  

Search by Sender

Type from: and then all or part of the sender's name or email address in the search box to tell Gmail you only want email that was sent by that person.

Search by Recipient

Tope to: and then all or part of the recipient's name or email address in the search box to tell Gmail you only want email that was sent to that person.

NOTE: This will include email sent to that recipient from others.  For example, if Susie sends an email to you and Jeremy, and you are searching for email sent to Jeremy, you will see Susie's email even though you didn't send it.

Limit to "from me"

To limit the search for a recpient to only email that you sent, use from:me in the search box:

Quick Reference

Advanced Keyword Search

The following operators allow you to refine your search as needed.

Subject

To limit a search to words found only in the subject, use subject followed by the word you are searching for:

Boolean Search (AND/OR/NOT)

You might need to search for more than one keyword, or you might want all the emails that have either of two keywords. 

OR

To search on multiple keywords and receive results that have one or more keywords, use OR in between each keyword.

time OR leave

from:rika OR from:jeremy

AND

By default, you do not have to include the operator AND for gmail to return messages that have both keywords in the message.  Using AND is optional.  You will get the same results.

Using AND

Not using AND

NOT (omit)

You can choose to not include messages that have certain words.  For example, if you are searching for a keyword and the results includes mail that is not relevant, you can choose to omit those messages by a keyword.  Type in the keyword that should be used to omit with a leading dash (-):

dinner -movie        Returns messages with the word dinner, but doesn't have the word movie

smith -webex         Returns messages with the name smith but doesn't have the word webex

In the second example above, the user receives daily emails from Webex about usage statistics from the Webex account - which can include names.  Often when searching for a name, these daily emails are also returned - but they are rarely relevant.  Using -webex will not return these daily emails from Webex in the search results.

Quick Reference

More Search Operators

Labels

If you are using labels to organize your mail, you can search by these labels to limit your search by using the label operator followed by the label's name.

Custom labels:

label:Accounting

Built-in labels:

label:unread

label:inbox

label:important

Special Folders

You can limit the search to specific folders, such as the trash can, using the in operator, followed by the folder's name.

NOTE:  These folders are not customizable and are built-in to Gmail.  Labels are used to create custom "folders" within Gmail.

Following are some of the folder names you might use for searching:

in:inbox

in:trash

in:sent

in:drafts

Message Markings

You can limit the search to messages with specific markers, like unread or starred.  Use the operator is followed by the marker.

is:unread

is:starred

is:read

is:important

Age

Please refer to the following article on searching for messages by age:  Gmail - Search by Date