Email from Hotmail or Gmail can be searched in a very similar fashion to the way you can search the web. All it takes is knowing the correct operators to use.

Why is using operators better?

Using operators directly on first search allows you to skip several steps to get to the same result. Instead of having to perform a generic search, you can target a specific folder, sender, keyword and so on all from a single search line.

Gmail search operators

Gmail fortunately lists all the operators you can use right here. Ones you’ll probably use frequently are in: and has:attachment.

One of the best uses of Gmail operators is to search your Spam label, which is excluded from a normal search by default. Sometimes you may want to specifically search through the Spam to see if anything was flagged by mistake. This is especially true if your spam count is quite high.

Example: in:spam someone@example.com

That search will search through all your spam for the email address someone@example.com. If any matches are found, you will see them.

Hotmail search operators

With the very recent update of the Hotmail interface, we finally now have a very good Advanced Search. This is found by clicking the down arrow next to the Bing bar:

..and then presented with an advanced search which is finally on par with Gmail:

This search is in fact slightly better than Gmail because you can specify a date range without the need for a custom search operator (Gmail only has “Date within” and not between).

These are the known Hotmail search operators:

from:

Used as from:someone@example.com

to:

Used as to:someone@example.com

subject:

Used as subject:your-search-term-here

TIP: Surround in parenthesis to search for a phrase, such as subject:(search term here)

folder:

Used as folder:”folder-name-here”

TIP: Surround in parenthesis if the folder name contains a space, such as folder:(folder name here)

hasattachment:

Used as hasattachment:true or hasattachment:false

Between operators you can use AND or OR if you like, and Hotmail will obey them.

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