If you have a lot of emails in Gmail, there are a few codes that will help you find what you need faster and more accurately than if you did it by hand. We tell you right now.
Telling you that Gmail is one of the most important email clients out of all the ones on the market right now, would be a statement that practically all of us know. Even so, there are many facets of this software that are not known and that can be very useful.
That is where the codes that we can use to search for emails come in much more easily, quickly and, above all, more efficiently. This is something that many of the users who normally use Gmail do not know or do not know what all of them exist.
It is a very good way to know where the email we need is at all times, since, if we have many emails in the inbox, it would be an arduous task to have to search for a specific one, because it would take us a lot of time and effort.
Let’s leave the preambles and we are going to know what are those codes that are going to help us to better manage all the emails that we have in Gmail.
Codes to filter by date
With these codes you will be able to find different emails based on the date you have been receiving them, also being valid for those you have sent yourself. The codes are the following:
- before: month/day/year (before).
- older: year/month/day (before).
- after: year/month/day (after).
- newer : month/day/year (after).
- older_than: days/month/year (older than).
- newer_than: day/month/year (after).
Document or file search codes
Within the emails that are sent or sent to us, we will have documents or attached files, which we may need to recover at some point, but having so many in memory, doing it manually becomes an odyssey.
If they are documents from the different Google office applications, we can search for them with these codes:
- Google Drive : has:drive
- Google Presentations : has:presentation
- Google Docs : has:document
- Google Spreadsheets : has:spreadsheet
If what we need is to search for normal files, both by extension and by name, we will be able to do it. Only that the Gmail codes are:
- filename : file extension.
- filename : name of the file.
Codes to search broadcast lists
Another facet that Gmail codes allow us is to search for emails by mailing lists, either in general or those that refer to a specific email. We can use these two Gmail options :
- list: (all mails).
- list: email_address (only emails from that address).
Codes to filter by sizes
Perhaps we know the approximate size of an email or several, so we can take advantage of the search that Gmail offers us.
To search by mail size use:
- smaller : bytes (smaller than).
- larger: bytes (greater than).
- size : bytes (same as).
Codes to find by contact or addresses attached
A very effective way to search for emails is by the name of the contact or by the addresses that are attached to the sending or receiving. We must use these Gmail codes:
- cc: name_of:contact_or_mail_address
- bcc: name_of:contact_or_mail_address
Codes to filter by words
If we know certain words that should appear in the emails that we want to recover, we will have certain interesting options:
- +word (emails with a specific word).
- -word (mails without a specific word).
- “Hello Mari, how are you?” (to find this phrase in emails).
- “buy AROUND 25 car” (the emails with these two words will be displayed. The 25 indicates the number of characters between the two words approximately. We can put the one we want).
Other Gmail secret codes
There are other codes that can also help and that you should know, to search by the subject of the email, by its category or by the label:
- subject : word in the subject
- category: category name
- label: label name
Keyboard shortcuts can also help
As a complement to everything we have just told you, it is also convenient for you to know the different types of shortcuts or key combinations that currently exist for Gmail.
The fluidity that we can achieve between the codes and keyboard shortcuts can make us master Gmail like true professionals. The different shortcuts are as follows:
quick navigation
- G + A: Go to All Mail
- G + C: Go to Contacts
- G + D: Go to Drafts
- G + I: Go to inbox
- G + K: Go to Tasks
- G + S: Go to Featured Conversations
- G + T: Go to Sent messages
- G + B: Go to Postponed messages
- G + L: Start tag search
- G + N: Go to the next page
- G + P: Return to the previous page
- U: Back to thread list
- K: Go to the most recent conversation
- J: Go to previous conversation
- ` (back quote) : Go to the next section of Inbox
- / (slash): Go to the search box
- Enter: open conversation
reading messages
- X: Select conversation
- A: Answer
- To: Reply all
- E: File
- F: forward
- M: Mute Conversation
- N: Next message in open conversation
- Q: Previous message in open conversation
- S: Toggle star
- Z: Undo last action
- !: Report as spam
- #: Delete
- B: nap
- V: Open the Move To menu
- L: Open label menu as
- , (comma): Move focus to the toolbar
- – (minus): Mark as not important
- = (same): mark as important
- ; (Semicolon): Expand the entire conversation
- : (Colon): Collapse the entire conversation
- _ (Underscore): Mark currently open message as unread
- [: Archive conversation and go to previous message
- ]: Archive conversation and go to the next message
- Shift + R: Reply in a new window
- Shift + A: Reply all in a new window
- Shift + F: Forward in a new window
- Shift + I: Mark as read
- Shift + U: mark as unread
- Shift + N: Update conversation
- Shift + T: Add conversation to Tasks
Composition
- C: Create Message
- D: Compose message in new tab
- Esc: Focus on the last chat or compose
- Ctrl + K: Insert a link
- Ctrl + M: Open spelling suggestions
- Ctrl + Enter: Send
- Ctrl + B: Add Bcc recipients
- Ctrl + C: Add CC recipients
- Shift + Esc: Focus on the main window
- Ctrl+: Skip to the next chat or compose
- Ctrl + F: Custom access from
formatting
- Ctrl + B: Bold
- Ctrl + I: Italic
- Ctrl + U: Underline
- Ctrl + [: Less indentation
- Ctrl + ]: indent more
- Ctrl + \: Unformat
- Ctrl + 7: numbered list
- Ctrl + 8: Bulleted list
- Ctrl + 9: Quote
- Ctrl + E: Align Center
- Ctrl + L: Align left
- Ctrl + R: align right
- Ctrl + 5: Previous source
- Ctrl + 6: Next source
- Ctrl + +: Increase text size
- Ctrl + -: Decrease the text size
conversation selection
- * + A: Select all conversations
- * + N: Deselect all conversations
- * + S: Select featured conversations
- * + T: Select non-starred conversations
- * + R: Select read conversations
- * + U: Select unread conversations
The control that you will have from now on with Gmail will not be comparable to what you had before knowing all this information.
Both the codes and the Gmail keyboard shortcuts will provide you with the ability to manage Gmail and great freedom when it comes to working with this Google email service.
