- gmail’s search by date feature allows you to track the emails you sent or received during a specific day, month or year.
- you can search by date in gmail with the options of advanced search or by typing special keywords in the search bar.
gmail is designed for seamless digital communication with features like online chat, video calling and google drive integration. but being the center of your online universe also means your inbox can get full very easily.
This is why Gmail has a variety of tools that you can use to organize your emails. If you’re looking for a specific email, especially if you received it a long time ago, try using the date search features. this will allow you to see all the emails you received on a certain date or between two different dates.
here’s how to use it on the gmail desktop website.
how to search gmail by date
If you generally know when the email you’re trying to find was sent, there are a couple of ways to find it.
using the search options menu
first, you can use the search options menu. Clicking the icon that looks like a series of switches in the gmail search bar will open a menu that you can use to specify what types of emails you want to see.
One of these options, date within, allows you to choose a date and view all emails you received within a day, week, month, or year of that date. this is great for finding a wide range of emails over a longer period of time. and you can use the other menu options to further narrow your search.
but if you want more control over the dates you see, try using date search keywords.
using keywords
Just like with normal google searches, typing certain keywords into the gmail search bar will allow you to see results you might not otherwise get. all of this works on both the mobile app and the desktop site.
If you’re looking for emails older than a specific date, use the format before:yyyy/mm/dd. to find emails after a specific date, use after:yyyy/mm/dd.
for example, if you are trying to find emails before or after September 1, 2021, type before:2021/09/01 or after:2021/09/01 in the search bar and press enter.
You can combine both keywords to find emails between two dates. just provide the latest possible date prefixed with before and the earliest possible date prefixed with after.
Also, if you are unsure of specific dates, you can use the older_than and newer_than keywords to search for emails before or after a certain time. use the letters d (day), m (month), and y (year) to specify your parameters.
For example, to find an email that is more than five months old, type older_than:5m and press enter. for an email received in the last three years, type newer_than:3y and press enter.
You can combine all of these keywords to get an ultra-focused search. for example, use after:2020/01/01 and older_than:3m to search for emails you received between early 2020 and three months ago.
and of course adding words you know are in the body or subject of the email will make the search even better.