Gmail, as a webmail client, may or may not like it but it is certainly the most powerful and rich in options that can be found for the amount of tools available to the user. Being a Google service, research has one of its most natural strengths.
Compared to other email reading and management clients, in Gmail you do not have to worry about the order of the messages or the way they are displayed because it is always possible to trace every email received or sent from the search box at the top.
Searching in Gmail not only works by finding a word in the body and subject of the email but it is also able to find the attached document that contains that word .
It therefore becomes easy to search for particular documents received or sent in the past that talk about the same topic.
Although you can search Gmail in a simple way, just like you do in Google, there are ways to do advanced searches using some search operators that you need to know.
To begin with, to make more complex searches in Gmail, you have to click on the down arrow on the right side of the writing field to open the advanced search.
The window that opens shows guided search options, with fields to fill: From, To, Contains, Does not contain, Object and Attachment yes or no.
Using the form is obviously much faster than the respective basic search operators.
The main search operators of Gmail (not included in the preset form) more particular and useful, to be typed with the keyboard in the search field, followed by the words to be found, are 5:
1) File name : filename:
With this operator you can find messages that have an attachment of the specified type.
For example, you can write filename: doc to find all documents written with Word.
By writing filename: roma you can find any attachments that have the word roma in the file name.
By writing has: attachment filename: pdf roma you can find all the emails with a PDF attachment that contain the word roma in their contents.
2) Data : after: and before:
This operator is not very simple to write because the date must be written in the 03/10/2012 format.
You can still find all the emails received or sent before a certain date, after a certain date or in a time interval by writing both operators.
Searches by date can also be done in this way:
newer_than: 7d from: me to find emails sent in the last 7 days.
after: 2016/12/01 to: me, to find the emails received in December 2016.
3) Search in all folders : in: anywhere
This operator is used to do a word search on all emails.
In fact, by default the simple search excludes Spam, Trash and archived folders without labels.
If, for some reason, you want to include these folders in the search you have to use in: anywhere word .
4) Search for your favorite messages
Who uses Gmail as an expert, surely uses the stars to highlight the most important messages.
Using the has: yellow-star operator it will search for all emails that have been marked with a yellow star.
The list of symbols to mark messages in a special way are 12: yellow-bang green-star and green-check, orange-star, orange-guillemet, red-star, red-bang, purple-star, purple-question, blue-star, blue-info .
5) Search the chat history is: chat
All Google Talk chat history that is integrated into Gmail is saved.
With this operator you can search in this history any word.
A support page lists all the Gmail operators of the advanced search
