Different Ways Explained How to Search Email by Date in Gmail!

If you are looking for some emails or chats from a certain date in your Gmail archive, then this post is for you! It helps you to know how to search a date range in Gmail.

So, without wasting time, let’s dive into the details—

Gmail—A Product of Google ‘King of Search’

While Gmail needs no introduction, it must be mentioned that Gmail is a Google product and Google is one that has mastered the art of search.

So, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Gmail has some incredible built-in search tools that make it easy to find long-lost messages.

Although you can get more advanced tips on Gmail searching from our guide on Gmail filters, right now, we’re going to focus on learning the ways how to search by date in Gmail.

How to Search Emails by Date in Gmail?

One of the many cool things about Gmail is that you can search your email by date. So, here are two popular methods that can be used to find emails by date in Gmail—

Method 1: Use Advanced Search

You can search by date in Gmail using Gmail’s ‘Advanced Search’ option. 

Q: What’s Gmail’s Advanced Search Feature? Gmail has an advanced search drop-down panel that appears below the search bar with various parameters to help you search and offer you the ability to choose a label to search within. Knowing these advanced search features will help you refine your search even further. Having said that, any information you remember about an email can be added to one of the suggested parameters— From (Who sent you the email) To (who actually received the email) Subject (the name of the email subject) Has the words (any words that you remember are in the email content) Doesn’t have (anything you know is not included in the email) Has an attachment (if documents or images are attached to the email) Don’t include chats (exclude any chat conversation) Size (the size of the email) Date within (time range from 1 day to 1 year) Size (email size whether large or small) Search (the folder you want to include)

Now that you are well-versed about this method; it’s time to use this method to find emails by date in Gmail. For this, you have to follow these steps—

Step 1: First, ‘Log in to your Gmail account’ in the desktop version of Gmail and not on the mobile app.

Step 2: When you’re logged in, you’ll see a search bar at the top of the screen. In that, enter whatever ‘Keyword terms’ you wish to search for because this is where the real magic happens.

By default, you’ll be looking for the subject line and body of your messages. Note that you don’t need to include the text here to search by date, but it’s helpful to narrow things down.

For example, let’s say you want to find an email your friend sent you last year with pictures from the Christmas celebration—and you know the email was received in or around the month of December. So, you can search for ‘Christmas | Photos’ terms. 

Step 3: After that, you can click on the ‘Three-horizontal line icon’ on the right side of the search bar because here, you will find a list of advanced search options that you can apply to your search. However, for now, let’s only use the ‘date within’ option. So, apply a date range to narrow things down—

To do this, select a ‘date’ on the right. Taking the above example, in our case, the date would be December 25, 2022. Similarly, on the left, you can choose the ‘date within’ parameter with an interval of somewhere between 1 day and 1 week. Again, taking the above example, in our case, we will choose 1 week.

Step 4: Once you’ve entered the date range, feel free to modify your search in other ways that you deem relevant using the ‘advanced search options.’ For example, you can include recipients in the ‘From’ and ‘To’ section and also, depending on whether the mail you’re looking for contains attachments or not, you can tick-mark the ‘Has Attachments’ option!

For example, you can include recipients in the ‘From’ and ‘To’ section and also, depending on whether the mail you’re looking for contains attachments or not, you can tick-mark the ‘Has Attachments’ option!

Step 5: When you’re ready, click on the ‘Search’ button and Gmail’s search feature will search for all emails containing the keyword ‘Christmas | Photos’ received or sent within 1 week of December 25, 2022.

Method 2: Use Search Operators

According to this method, you can search Gmail by date using Gmail search operators, which you can use right within the search bar to conduct your search. 

Q: What are Gmail Search Operators? Gmail search operators are also known as Gmail search commands. They are basically the text strings, made up of words and symbols. You can use them in the Gmail search box to filter your inbox/Gmail search results. You can even combine operators to filter your results even further. So, by using these commands to modify your search, you can get more satisfying Gmail search results, and comparatively find things faster. Knowing this, if you are thinking about using Gmail search operators, then know that these are the parameters to use your Gmail search operators— (Term or Phrase) – search for a specific or phrase. -(Term) – Exclude emails containing that specific word or phrase. +(Term) – Find email messages containing that specific word or phrase. After:(Date) – Search for emails sent on or after a specific date. Before:(Date) – Search for email sent before a specific date. Bcc:(Name) – Search blind copied emails sent to a specific person. CC:(Name) – Find Carbon copied emails sent to a specific person. Category:(Category Name) – Search for email messages in a category. File Name: (File name or File Type) – Search for a specific file or type of file attachment. In: (Folder or Label) – Search for email in that specific folder or label. Subject: (Word or Phrase) – Find emails containing that specific word or phrase in the subject line. In: (Anywhere) – Search for email in any of your Gmail folders.

So, in order to try this method, here’s what you need to do—

Step 1: Launch ‘Gmail’ in your respective mobile and ‘Log in’ to your account (if not already). Although this method works in the desktop app as well, it works ideally if you are using the mobile app.

Step 2: Then, open ‘Gmail Search.’ While it appears at the top of the screen from any Gmail page, on mobile devices, you may need to touch a ‘Magnifying glass icon’ to open Gmail’s search bar.

Step 3: Next, you need to enter your ‘Search term’ as you normally would in the search bar at the top of the screen. Although this is optional, you might consider doing it as it helps narrow things down.

Step 4: After entering your search term keyword, you’ll need to include one or both of the following parameters;

• after: YYYY/MM/DD (substitute the YYYY/MM/DD with your actual target date)
• before: YYYY/MM/DD (substitute the YYYY/MM/DD with your actual target date)

Note here that, on the one hand the ‘after parameter’ will search for all emails received after a certain date, and on the other hand the ‘before parameter’ will search for all emails received before a certain date.

However, if you want to search within a custom date range, you can use both as well. For instance, in our case, continuing the above example, we will search for ‘Christmas | Photos’ in all emails after December 25, 2022 but before January 1, 2023.

Tip: If you can’t remember the exact dates, you might consider using the ‘older_than:’ or ‘newer_than:’ parameters instead of ‘after’ and ‘before’ parameters. For example, entering ‘2 months’ in ‘newer_than:’ parameter will show results from within the last 2 months. For more recent messages, use the older_than or newer_than parameters this way—

• older_than:3m = from more than 3 months ago
• newer_than:2m = from less than 2 months ago
• older_than:3m newer_than:1y = older than 3 months and newer than 1 year

Step 5: Once you have entered the date range in which you want to search for emails, press ‘Enter’ to search for all emails within the date you entered.

You might also be interested in- How to Fix “Gmail Not Sending Email” Issue

How You Can Use Gmail’s Date Search Filters In 11 Tried and Tested Ways to Search Gmail by Date!

These are the 11 tried and tested ways in which you can use Gmail’s date search filters to search Gmail by date—

1. Before a Certain Date

To search for emails received or sent before a certain date, you simply need to do is open your ‘Gmail account’ and type the date in this format— ‘before:YYYY/MM/DD’ into the search bar.

For example, if you want to locate emails received or sent before December 25th, 2022, then write ‘before:2022/12/25’ and then press ‘Enter.’

2. After a Certain Date

If you want to find emails received or sent after a certain date, then simply ‘Gmail’ and enter the date in this particular format— ‘after: YYYY/MM/DD’ in the search bar. 

For example, write ‘after:2022/12/25’ in the search bar and hit ‘Enter’, and this will help you search for emails written or sent after December 25^th, 2022.

3. Between Two Dates

After this, you can also ask Gmail to search emails received between two dates.

With this in mind, to find emails between two dates, simply combine the ‘after’ and ‘before’ date filters in this format— ‘after YYYY/MM/DD before YYYY/MM/DD.’

For example, if you want to find emails received between December 2nd, 2022, and December 25th, 2022, then write ‘after:2022/12/25 before:2022/12/25’ and hit ‘Enter’ to see in the search result in all emails that have been received or sent between the two dates you entered.

4. Keywords With Dates

Sometimes, dates alone aren’t enough to find an email, and, in that case, it’s worth suggesting that you combine Gmail’s date filters with keywords to narrow down your search. 

So, all you have to do is simply type your query and add your keyword.

For example, if you want to find your pay slip email received after January 1, 2023, type ‘after:2023-01-01 pay slip’ and let Gmail search for that specific email. 

Similarly, if you want to keep track of all the invoices received in the last month, type ‘newer_than:1m invoices’ and hit ‘Enter.’

5. Older Than

In addition, you can also use Gmail to search emails older than a certain time period, and it is up to you whether you want to search emails that are 1 day, 2 months, or 1 year old.

To do this, you’ll need to type ‘Older_than’ into the search bar, followed by a ‘colon, a number, and a letter’ (in the format d, m, or y).

Here’s what it means—

• d stands for day
• m stands for month
• y stands for the year.

For example, let’s say you’re searching for emails older than 25 days then, your query should look like this— ‘Older_than:25d.’ 

And, if you want to find emails older than 2 months, you can type ‘Older_than:2m’ or for 1 year, you can type ‘Older_than:1y’ to let Gmail search those 25 days or 1-year-old emails for you.

6. Newer Than

Conversely, you can search for emails newer than a certain time period in Gmail. It also works in the same way as we just mentioned above. So, it means you just need to use ‘newer_than’ instead of ‘older_than.’

For example, if you type ‘newer_than:25d’ to find emails written in the last 25 days or ‘newer_than:2m’ or ‘newer_than:1y’ to find emails written in the last 1 year and press ‘Enter’ then Gmail search will help you to find email messages which are less than 25 days or 2 months or 1 year old.

7. Sender With Dates

In another scenario, suppose you want to display emails from a certain sender only, how would you do it? Well, to do so, all you need to do is add Gmail’s ‘from:’ search operator to your query.

For example, if you type ‘older_than:25d from:ITYug247’ and press ‘Enter’ to let Gmail do the rest then, it will find all email messages written by ITYug247 more than 25 days ago.

8. Recipient With Dates

In the same way, you can use a similar query to view emails sent to a specific recipient. However, of course, you need to refine your search with Gmail’s ‘to:’ search operators.

For example, if you enter ‘older_than:25d to:ITYug247’ in the search box and press ‘Enter’, Gmail will show you emails that were sent to ITYug247 25 days ago.

9. Larger Size

Another way to search Gmail by date is to search for emails larger than a specific size. For that, you need to use the ‘larger:’ operator with the K or M size of the email (K for KB and M for M).

For example, if you enter ‘larger:500M’ in the search bar and press ‘Enter’ then Gmail will find all emails that are larger than 500MB in size.

Tip: You can also use the new size: operator, but then you have to specify the size in bytes, e.g., ‘Size: 500000000’ for 500MB, which is a bit more difficult and challenging.

10. Smaller Size

Conversely, if you want to find smaller size emails, you can use the smaller: operator. For example, if you type ‘Smaller:500M’ in the search bar and press ‘Enter’, Gmail will show you all emails with a size smaller than 500M.

11. Date With Attachments

Finally, there’s also an option to search Gmail by date for emails with attachments. To search for emails (having attachments included) by date, you need to first type your ‘word or phrase’ in the search box and then, select the ‘Has Attachments’ option from Gmail’s advanced search menu.

For example, if you type the keyword ‘Christmas’ in the search bar, use the parameter ‘older_than2m’ , select the ‘Has attachment’ option, and press ‘Enter.’ Now, Gmail will search for emails containing Christmas words with attachments older than 2 months.

Bonus: How Do You Improve Your Use of Gmail?

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Bottom Line

That is all! Hope you found this descriptive guide on how to search emails by date in Gmail helpful. Well, because learning how to search by date in Gmail can help you become a more efficient emailer.

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