Gmail: How to find all “unread” messages in “inbox”

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Posted in » Gmail - by Ades on September 23rd, 2008

I have just done a cleanup of my Gmail inbox. For the first time it’s showing “2 Unread Messages” andinbox_unread.png not “100+ Unread Messages“.

How do I feel? Feel like I had a haircut after 6 months, no no, feel like I just shaved my head ;) Yeah it’s that good to see so few unread messages in my Gmail.

Two little Gmail search strings and a lot of courage helped me to achieve this result. A lot of courage - because some of the emails I intentionally marked “unread” so that I could reply to them when I have a spare time. But the spare time somehow never came ;) and by now, it was too late to reply to them anyway.

As for the two little search strings, they were:

  1. is:unread for listing unread messages.     2)   in:inbox for listing messages in inbox

Used together as is:unread in:inbox in the search field, it will list all the unread emails in your inbox.

Other Useful Search Strings

Here are some of the other useful gmail search strings that you can use:

  • Emails from particular sender
    from:ades or from:ades@adesblog.com - so you can use either the sender’s name or email.
  • Search for emails in particular label
    in:label - just like above I used “in:inbox”, you can search for emails with any other labels.
  • Emails CC’ed or BCC’ed to someone
    cc:arstan - it will search for emails that were CC’ed to Arstan. (Similarly you can use bcc:arstan).
  • Search for chat messages
    is:chat - is:chat advertise - it will look for any chat message that contains the word “advertise” in it.
  • Emails that are read, unread and starred
    is:read - is:unread - is:starred - it will search for emails that are read, unread and starred respectively. Please note that you can combine more than one search string. Eg; is:starred is:unread from:ades
  • Emails with specific subject title
    subject:adsense - finds emails with a word “adsense” in their subject.
    subject:(google adsense) - finds emails in which the subject contains both the word “google” AND “adsense”.
    subject:”google adsense” - finds emails in which the subject contains a phrase “google adsense” in them. Phrases like “adsense google” or “google has adsense” won’t be found.
  • Emails that contain attachment
    has:attachment - search for messages with an attachment. Eg; from:ades has:attachment
  • Emails with specific attachment
    filename:fonts.zip - search for messages that has attachment fonts.zip.

Memorize the above search strings and you will never lose an email in your Gmail ever again! Hope you find it useful.

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19 Responses to “Gmail: How to find all “unread” messages in “inbox””

  1. By Arstan on Sep 23, 2008

    Exactly, it’s a good feeling to have empty inbox.

  2. By David Bradley on Sep 23, 2008

    Is there an equivalent for searching Google Reader items. I have several hundred feeds and would like to be able to search by keyword only for unread items, so that today I could dig out all the stories on GMail for instance…

  3. By kouji on Sep 24, 2008

    great way to start a new day… with a clean inbox. congratulations. can be quite difficult to do.

  4. By Rice Blogger on Sep 24, 2008

    great trick..i did not know that….i have thousands of unread..haha

  5. By Free PS3 on Sep 26, 2008

    I know the feeling. Whenever I’m away for just a few days, I’m always back trying to battle my way through what seems like an endless stream of junk mail.

  6. By hank on Sep 26, 2008

    It’s ridiculous how “A.D.D.” I am with my inbox. I’m not like that in normal life, but anything left in my inbox after a day just really bothers me. It’s nice to see it clean as a whistle! ;)

  7. By godius on Sep 26, 2008

    Great article, keep it up. I found you guys via the new website indexing service over at http://www.dignova.com
    Grtz,
    Michael

  8. By Genuine Home Business on Sep 27, 2008

    My unread emails give me nightmares but thanks to this trick i can sleep again.

    Thanks

    Jason

  9. By kuanhoong on Sep 27, 2008

    Useful tips indeed. It is hard to imagine if there is no gmail for me.

  10. By PS3 on Oct 1, 2008

    Gmail has so many great features but there are one or two that make it less user friendly.

    Grouping mails by subject does keep things tidier but I would prefer to do that by contacts instead. When you did your clean up, how did you deal with that - I mean, what say you wanted part of a conversation but not all of it?

  11. By Ades on Oct 1, 2008

    PS3, no I just wanted to make all the unread messages read or delete them altogether.

  12. By Paintball Guns on Oct 2, 2008

    I didn’t know about some of these. Thanks for the great tips.

    Another useful search in Gmail is searching before or after a certain date. Just enter this text:
    before:date (date is in this format: yyyy/mm/dd)
    after:date

    For example: before 2007/12/24

  13. By Andrew. Estate Lawyer. on Oct 2, 2008

    Inbox zero! Woohoo!

    The thing I like most about Gmail is the search ability. You don’t even have to type “from:” to reliably find emails from a certain person. Just type the first part of their email address. If the address is “bob123@domain.com”, just type “bob123″ in the search box. It will get 99% of what you need in a flash.

  14. By Lowongan Kerja Terbaru on Oct 2, 2008

    I love Gmail, thanks for this tips..

  15. By Marketing Man on Oct 2, 2008

    Wow, this is a very thoughtful feature they have added on Gmail. It’s great, because it’s quite annoying when you always find large number of unread messages in you inbox and you end up not reading your latest mail too. It just clogs up everything.

  16. By gout on Oct 4, 2008

    really useful information, I always use gmail for my free email…I will try the facilities…thanks

  17. By YourDownline.co.uk on Oct 10, 2008

    My inbox fills up every day, 100 relevant emails, 400 spam :( Every day!

  18. By Minnesota Attorney on Nov 20, 2008

    YourDownline.co.uk, I have never had that experience with Gmail. Gmail catches most spam. If you are marking messages as spam and you continue to get spam, you might consider more serious preventative measures like blocking email from certain country-level domains, messages with spammy words (like “viagra”), or getting anti-spam software.

  19. By pixels design on Aug 26, 2010

    Nice, thank you so much.

    Makes finding 2 unread messages from 100s of emails in your inbox alot easier.


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