Have you made the most out of GMail Features?
It’s been four years since I am using GMail, and still I love it as a brand new toy. No doubt, the service from Google means GMail scores amazingly on search. Even they say “Search, don’t sort” but searching and filter based sorting is what makes it competition killer. Even power users are not fully aware of all the search operators. Here are some tips I use to get most out of my emailing.
Searching with Boolean in Google Mail
- OR : capitalization matters, 'OR' term is used to specify to search for either of terms separated by the 'OR' word. Like for example I submit search as 'Coffee OR Tea' then I would get all the mails which contains word Coffee or Tea (Or both). We can use | as a replacement or even placed 'OR' terms in curly brackets '{}' and the result would be same (though not documented) that means 'Tea OR Coffee', Tea | Coffee' and '{Tea Coffee}' will produce the same effect
- AND: is the default behavior for GMail, so wouldn’t necessary to put it search (but sometimes necessary to construct complex searches) again just putting SPACE yields the same result. For example, Putting “Mango AND Apple” (or “Mango Apple” or “Mango+Apple”) will search for mails, containing both Mango and Apple
- NOT: Ever need to exclude certain terms from results? Then 'NOT' is useful. It searches only mails in which given term is 'NOT' present. Example 'NOT' chat would search all the mails which does Not contain the word chat. We can use – (hyphen) for this or even ! (exclamation symbol, but again not documented)
So we can combine these Boolean operators and play search, like (Mango AND Orange NOT Banana) OR Apple will give us results in which either word Apple is found OR both Mango and Orange is found BUT not Banana
For further searching GMail also provided with lots of keywords, and
syntax for using them is <Keyword>:<Search Term> (Remember: No space in between)
These keywords are
- FROM: is used to search sender. Like if I put 'from:abc@xyz.com' then gmail will search all the mails which are form abc@xyz.com
- TO: is used to search based on recipient of the mail. Example searching 'TO:dumbo@gmail.com' will give the mails which are sent to Dumbo J. Like wise GMail also have 'CC' and 'BCC' keywords for searching CC and BCC fields respectively. Use them in the same way for CC and BCC - 'CC:xyz@xyz.com' & 'BCC:xyz@xyz.com'
- SUBJECT: will only search given terms in subject field in mail. Like searching 'Subject:Quotation' will search all mails in which subject contains the word quotation.
- IN: for restraining our search into specific folders, IN operator is used, like 'IN:sent' will search only sent mails, likewise 'IN:inbox', 'IN:anywhere' (when you want to search all the mails, including trash and spam which is excluded by default.
- IS: is word is used along with certain keywords to search mails, like 'IS:READ', 'IS:STARRED', 'IS:SPAM' etc
- LABEL: as you must have created many labels for filtering mails, you can use this operator for searching only specific labels, like 'LABEL:forwards' will search only mails which have forwards as label
- 'HAS:ATTACHMENT' is simple keyword to see if mail has attachment
- FILENAME: will search for mail with specified filename or extension as a attachment, like querying for 'filename:ZIP' will give all mails which contains zip-file in attachment
- AFTER and BEFORE: are only available for time line search, we can construct mails which are sent/received during specified time duration. Example searching for 'AFTER:2008/06/30 BEFORE:2008/07/07' will give all mails which are sent received on first week of this July
So these are all major search Booleans and keyword using which we can construct complex searches and yes all search can be saved as filter ;)
- Backup: setting certain words in subject and sending to own mail with good filter and our online backup drive is ready. Like I mail myself with subject: Storage and filter like
From:me subject:StoreThis then Archive and label it as Storage
- Block Users: I blocked many domain who are offering me what I don’t need :D
From:(*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com|*@spam1.com) then delete it
- Spam: I get irritated to see daily added spam to spam folder, I simply have set filter to auto delete all spam
'Is:spam' then delete it - If you fear losing genuine mails avoid this
- Forwards: yeah I have over 3000 mails in forwards section, useful for forwarding to others :D
Subject:(FWD | FW) then archive and apply label forwads
- Fetching mails from multiple ID is easy with GMail, I have 3-4 mail IDs and I fetch them using POP fetcher and classify them accordingly. You can use built in forwarding to fetch this but it might get problem sometimes if you are placed in BCC from that ID as GMail doesn’t support filtering based on mail headers yet.
- Media Center: you can make labels like MP3/ EBooks and movies based on criteria such as attachment type
Filename:MP3 apply label Music
- Feeds: You can also set filters on RSS feeds and collect all the updates in one place.
Also read:
Hidden Gmail features help avoid spam
Tags: gmail google tips shorcut email
Article Written by Sandeep, recovered on 16th July 9.01 after dataloss.
