I need to find a message I sent to someone via Gmail about six months ago and am having no luck with search patterns. How do I just search my sent messages mailbox in Google Mail?
Like most things Google, the unadorned search box at the top of your Gmail window hides a remarkably sophisticated search language that can make your task considerably easier. I’ve written before about power Gmail searches, but this time I want to show you how to use the built-in search builder wizard (yeah, a Windows term. You know what I mean) to construct the sophisticated search you seek.
For this example, I’m going to build a search for messages that contain the word “butterfly”, are in my sent messages folder and were sent within the last two months from my Gmail account.
To start, have a close look at the search bar itself:
Look really closely, actually. See that tiny grey triangle pointing downward, just to the left of the magnifying lens?
Yeah. That’s it. Click on it and prepare to be surprised:
Who knew that Gmail had this handy search wizard? 🙂
With this you can fine tune your search and it’ll actually build the search query needed, so you even get to learn how to just type things in directly next time.
Let’s look more closely, first at the “All Mail” menu, which, upon clicking, reveals all your Gmail folders:
I have a lot of keywords / tags / mailboxes / folders (whatever word you want to use to describe it).
Pick the one you want to search, like “Sent Mail”, then look near the bottom where it says “Date within…”
I’m going to be searching for messages that contain “butterfly” (a word I type into the “Has the words” box) within my “Sent Mail” folder that were sent within the last two months, so I’ll pick “2 months”.
Click the blue magnifying lens search button and the search is created and appears in the search bar:
Ah, so that’s the secret. “is:sent” gets just messages you sent, “after:year/month/day” and “before:year/month/day” define a date range, and, of course, “butterfly” is the word to be sought in the matching messages.
Ready to actually do the search? Click on the blue search button and away it goes.
Now you know. Hope that helps you unearth that diamond in the vast coal mine of your Gmail account.
Yes, but if you have 50 messages that have the word “butterfly” in them you’ll get a list of 50 messages without any indication of who they were sent to. The only information you get is who sent the e-mail. Guess what–it’s your “SENT” file so the sender is always you (or one of you).
I need to know “which of my board members have I told about the threat posed by “butterflies”, and this search would mean I’d have to open every one of those 50 messages in order to find out.
Not sure what you’re seeing, but if you’ve engaged in dialog with them, then the entries that match a search for, say, “in:sent butterflies” will show both your name and the name of the recipient in threaded view. Just tested and verified…
thanks for information,
Regards,kns