Searching Your Email for that Elusive Message

I do not clear my email inbox like many people.  I usually delete commercial types of emails and keep all personal ones as well as informative ones.  The amount of space that the emails take up is so minimal that after 10 years of using gmail, I still have ample room.
A friend clears her inbox regularly and puts me to shame but only in a fleeting way because it is a hangover of how I used to be more organised when I used different platforms for email.  The reason why my shame is fleeting is that I can find any of my emails so easily, using the search function in the gmail inbox.
This blog post today is to show you how "Google is the King of Search" when it comes to finding an elusive email if you use gmail.

On your laptop or desktop computer, gmail has a search box at the top, like most email platforms.  But now for the amazing, fantabulous difference! The little down arrow in that box is the key to effective searching.

Once you click on that down arrow, it opens up a world of possibilities.

You can now search by who the email is from OR who it was to, OR what the subject line was, OR if the email included a word like "holiday" or "gemstone".  You can also eliminate words that it doesn't have so if you have narrowed down your search to a word like "sale" you can eliminate those emails that have "Briscoes" in them as well.
You can also search by size (I don't often use that one because I never know how big they are!) OR you can search by date (maybe it was in the last year or the last 5 years or maybe just yesterday) and you can search through all mail including your archives or just a selection of your emails in these places: -

Right at the bottom you can search by emails that have attachments - really useful if you know that it had a contract, a pdf or a document attached.  You can use any one of the search criteria or several of them if you like, but you will find it such a useful tool.  Don't forget, the down arrow in the search box - you will find it in Google Drive as well!

The search function in the mobile gmail app also works very well.  But we will cover that one next time.  Try out today's tips and see how you get on.  

You will really understand how Google is the King of Search!