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April 2, 2009

Gmail Search Autocomplete

Gmail added yet another Labs feature, this time related to searching. If you enable "Search Autocomplete", Gmail will try to finish your query using names and email addresses from your contact list, built-in Gmail sections like "starred messages" and more advanced searches like "has photos" or "unread messages".

The new feature is especially useful if your search includes advanced operators like to: or from: because it's easier to enter the sender or the recipient.


Since Gmail doesn't show in the list of suggestions previous queries or common patterns from your messages, the feature has a limited use. You could get similar suggestions by typing names in the Gmail chat box and clicking on "View recent conversations".

Some other search-related Labs feature you should enable: Quick Links, which lets you bookmark Gmail pages, including frequent searches, Go to label, that autocompletes the name of a Gmail label, and Multiple Inboxes, which allows you to create a dashboard from different Gmail views.

Another quick way to view your contacts is to use the standalone page for Google Contacts available at google.com/contacts or google.com/contacts/a/domain.com. According to the Apps Update blog, "the new standalone contact manager allows you to manage your contacts within Google Apps without enabling Gmail". You can also use it with a regular Google account that doesn't include access to Gmail.

{ Thanks, Niranjan and Jason Varitek Fan. }

11 comments:

  1. Really great feature. You know what i would like ? A google suggest for the contents of my e-mail. This would be useful and interesting!

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  2. Gmail is my favourite mail provider, and gmail is continuosly adding new features to itself, and this one is amazing. Thanks to gmail for providing such a great mail service.

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  3. It would be nice if Gmail search emulated Google web search and found words with accents even if you search without them.

    When you don't know if a person has written to you using accents or not, you often have to search twice to find something, once with accents and once without. (e.g. espaƱa and then espana)

    Google Web search provides (virtually) the same results for the 2 versions.

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  4. @Jean-Philippe Martin: That would be a very nice feature but I don't think that will be implemented soon because of privacy problems ... Although you'll have to choose yourself whether you use it or not ...

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  5. I enabled it but then it was not working.
    Only when I performed a signout and re-login then it works!


    hongjun

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  6. I tried typing "jp" and it shows "has photos"!!! Great

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  7. @Loh Hon Chun: That's probably the "jp" from jpeg or jpg ^^ ;-) It does that to when I type a "p" (png). So it makes sense but it looks weird in the first place ^^

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  8. Yes, I knew that :)
    So I said great!

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  9. Ah I thought it was an ironical "Great" ^^

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  10. I adore autocomplete search fields!
    By the way - this is one of my favorite plugins in WordPress :)
    I think it's really helpful.

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  11. How do you disable gmail autocomplete

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