Beginner’s Guide to Gmail Search
Despite Google’s robust search features, finding information across G Suite tools is not an easy feat for most users, and Gmail is no exception. For many of us, Gmail’s search is exasperating — bordering on useless — if we can’t remember the exact wording of the subject. We know the frustration of digging through our inboxes, clicking page after page, and losing countless hours of our workdays in search of just one attachment that’s preventing us from getting on with our tasks.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide to enhance your Gmail search and boost productivity, including a breakdown of the most helpful search operators and a step-by-step on creating your own filters with Advanced Search. You’ll be using Gmail like a pro in no time!
Search Operators
These lesser known tricks will speed up your hunt by refining your search based on the commands you type into the Gmail search bar. Bonus: You can use all of these search operators in Xoba as well.
Elevating Your Search
Now that you know what to search, let’s go over how you can modify your searches to be even more specific. These next few search operators are a bit more complex, so we’ve included multiple examples with explanations for your reference.
Creating Your Own Search Filters
You can make your Gmail experience even better by creating personalized filters to automatically carry out actions when a message matches specific criteria. Open Advanced Search, select your search specifications, and click “Create filter.”
Then, you can dictate what Gmail should do with the messages that match the search. Once you create the filter, Gmail will perform the commands for all incoming mail that meets the specifications. This is a great tool for keeping your inbox clean and organized without manually sorting through your messages each day.
Try Xoba
Thanks to these advanced features, you can discover information in Gmail more efficiently. But this doesn’t solve anything if the information you’re looking for isn’t actually in Gmail. A prominent issue among users of multiple cloud applications is knowing where things are. It’s easy to lose track of where the most updated version of the pitch deck is or where last week’s meeting notes ended up. They could be somewhere in a Slack conversation, sent in a Gmail thread, or perhaps they were shared via Google Drive. The options can feel endless as new applications are added to our workflow all the time.
Xoba tackles this fragmentation by aggregating your files, messages, tasks, etc. across applications and making it easy to discover information without the wild goose chase. Join our beta today.
