If you enable saving your chat history in Gmail, your conversations from Google Talk are saved as standard emails. To make them stand out from the rest of messages, Gmail adds two labels:
chat and
chats.
If you want to search your chats, you just have to add
label:chat to your query. If you want to search only your mail, exclude the chats by adding
-label:chat.
Gmail has many other hidden labels that can make your life easier, so you don't have to use the advanced search:
*
label:inbox - search only your Inbox. It's a good idea to keep your Inbox clean.
*
label:star (
label:starred) - search only your starred messages. You can use the star button like a bookmarking system. Star only important messages.
*
label:draft (or
label:drafts) - search only unfinished messages. Drafts could be used for storing notes or emails that must be sent later.
*
label:sent (or
label:sentmail,
label:sent-mail,
label:sent mail ) - search only sent mail. It may be useful to restrict your search only to messages you've sent, or only to messages you've received if you add a minus.
*
label:all (or
label:allmail,
label:all-mail,
label:all mail ) - search all your mail, including messages from Trash (
label:trash) and Spam (
label:spam).
*
label:read and
label:unread. Restrict your search only to read mail or unread mail. For example, to find all your sent messages that have unread replies, you can search for
label:unread label:sent.
*
label:voicemail (or
label:voicemails ) - search only
the voicemail received from a Google Talk user.
It's nice that you can combine all these labels with user-defined labels in a query. To show results that have both label A and label B, just search for
label:A label:B. To show results that have one of the labels A and B or both, just search for
label:A OR label:B.
Update: Instead of label:A, you can just type l:A. [Thank you, Busse].
Labels: Gmail
Chinmay said on October 2, 2006 3:49 AM PDT:
Google indeed would never ceaze to amaze us all !
With enhancement like there and "Keyboard shortcuts" - Gmail developers are doing an impressive task indeed !
Jacob said on October 2, 2006 7:53 PM PDT:
I prefer to use the in:whatever (such as in:inbox, in:all, in:sent) syntax.
Merlinox said on October 3, 2006 12:05 AM PDT:
There's also "chat" label :)
said on October 3, 2006 5:15 AM PDT:
A long time ago it was also possible to create Labels with those system name, such as "Unread". As a result, I have an "Unread" label which gathers all my unread mail (including mails I don't see in the inbox because some filters take care of them and archive it) which is way cool and very missed in more recent accounts.
said on October 3, 2006 7:44 AM PDT:
dugg dugg dugg. the story is dugg. the digg effect.
xamox said on October 3, 2006 8:08 AM PDT:
Don't forget the search
has:attachment
It makes it easy if you want to free up some space or if you are searching for an e-mail from someone that has an attachment.
Thanks for the tips!
label:spam seems to work too. Useful for finding false-negatives.
said on October 3, 2006 9:50 AM PDT:
most of this post is old news:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7190
Ike said on October 3, 2006 10:26 AM PDT:
One more trick, concerning drafts.
I have, on occasion, used my gmail account to transfer a iseful utility from one of my machines to another.
Gmail scans the .exe files, and prevents you from sending them -- but nothing stops you from uploading it as a draft message, then downloading it on the other end.
I've got a few neat little utilities stored there, so if I am at a friend's computer, I know right where to go to find a tool I need.
said on October 3, 2006 1:45 PM PDT:
I also use to:molly and from:bob to sort by senders and recipients.
Albert said on October 3, 2006 4:13 PM PDT:
label:spam works... nice! There's no other way to search the spam folder! Can be useful to find false positives or mails related to 'enlargements' =)
busse said on October 3, 2006 6:41 PM PDT:
l:tag works as a shorter version of label:tag
Pallab said on October 12, 2006 2:34 AM PDT:
I just came across another blog which has plaguarised your post almost entirely.
Check http://khin007.com/2006/10/03/hidden-labels-in-gmail/
You may want to contact him and ask for a backlink.
said on October 26, 2006 3:23 AM PDT:
What gmail lacks is a search like "
-label". Thankfully firefox users can use
this cool script.
said on May 6, 2007 10:46 AM PDT:
How do I create folders in LABELS containing sub files to sort subjects like mac uses rather than have gazillions of labels?
Why isn't there an "unlabeled" (e.g., label:unlabeled)? I usually have most of my messages labeled (automatically or manually). I would like to be able to view all of my messages that I haven't labeled yet.
Srinivas said on December 21, 2007 2:49 AM PDT:
Srinivas said on December 21, 2007 2:51 AM PDT:
what about searching for emails that are sent or received from contacts. there are times when I dont wnat to see emails from email id that are not in my gmail address book.
Srinivas, you do that by going to Contacts, selecting the contact, and clicking "Recent conversations: Show".
anonymous, read mail is simply marked as read, so you don't need a label for that. You can use in:read or in:unread to see them.
said on January 29, 2008 3:35 AM PDT:
earlier I said this:
>> what about searching for emails that are sent or received from contacts. there are times when I dont wnat to see emails from email id that are not in my gmail address book.
Actually what I want to search/see emails that are sent or received from ALL of my contacts.
said on March 4, 2008 2:08 AM PDT:
Is it possible to go straight to a label with a URL such as this one?
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/label
@anonymous above:
Yes, but only in the new version of Gmail (available for IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3).
kaa said on March 18, 2008 5:45 AM PDT:
i have mails from a particular domain going to my spam. this mails when opened have the "report spam" button instead of the "unspam" and the "label:spam".
i want the mails to come to my inbox. so wanted to know how is the spam lable different from the link on the left which says spam.
There's no big difference. When you enter "label:spam", you'll see search results. When you click on "Spam", Gmail shows the same messages as before, but it also adds some appropriate actions like "Not Spam".
hIpPy said on April 4, 2008 11:22 AM PDT:
There should have been a way to find all labelled conversation by [has:label, is:labelled] so that one can find all unlabelled conversations.
They have this note on the gmail advanced search page:
"*There isn't a search operator for unlabeled messages."
Sad.
Sven said on June 13, 2008 2:10 PM PDT:
I would like to use placeholders like ? and * with my labels
said on September 7, 2008 6:10 AM PDT:
Here's how to label all your incoming mail in googlemail with '! unlabelled' so that you can easily find any mail you don't get around to re-labelling.
First create the new label, '! unlabelled', in the usual way.
Then Create a filter, using your googlemail address in the 'To:' box, and on the next step, select your new label, '! unlabelled'.
Try it out by sending a test message to yourself.
