Search

Press / anywhere, or use the search button on the right rail.

Search covers customer messages and your internal comments in the same query. The half-remembered “someone explained this in a note months ago” is one search away.

Plain words

Type words and every one of them has to appear: annual discount finds conversations containing both. Put a phrase in quotes to require the words in that order: "two months free". Words are matched whole, so bill does not find billing.

Words are looked for in the subject, the message body, the names and addresses of everyone on the message, and the text of internal comments. dana finds mail from [email protected] without an operator.

Operators

Operator	Finds
from:dana	Sender address contains “dana”
to:sales@	A To address contains it (Cc is not searched)
subject:renewal	Subject contains it
tag:vip	Carries that tag, by its exact name. Quote a tag with spaces: tag:"key account"
assignee:me	Owned by you
assignee:[email protected]	Owned by that teammate, by their full sign-in email
is:open is:snoozed is:done	By status. is:later and is:archived are accepted too
is:unassigned / is:assigned	Nobody owns it / somebody does
is:starred	Starred by you
is:unread	Unread for you
is:pinned	Pinned conversations
has:attachment	Has a file on it
in:comments	Only match internal comment text
in:messages	Only match the email itself
inbox:support	Only one inbox, matched on its address
before:2026-06-01 after:2026-01-01	By the date of the last message, in YYYY-MM-DD form

Combine them freely: tag:billing is:unassigned has:attachment. Any operator value can be quoted, so subject:"Q4 renewal" works.

assignee: takes me or an email address, not a first name. assignee:dana finds nothing.

in:comments is the useful one

in:comments searches what your team said rather than what the customer wrote. It is how you find the thread where the refund policy got decided, and it is the thing a plain Gmail search cannot do at all. On its own, with no words, in:comments lists every conversation that has a comment.

One quirk worth knowing: the result rows show the conversation’s snippet, which is customer text. A result that matched on a comment will not show you the matching words until you open it.

What is searchable

Everything in inboxes you can see, which means shared inboxes you are a member of, plus your own personal inbox. It never reaches another person’s personal mail.

Trash and spam are left out unless you ask for them with is:trash or is:spam. Results are capped at the most relevant 25; if what you want is not there, add an operator rather than scrolling.

Search from the quick switcher

⌘K / Ctrl K opens a switcher for views, inboxes and tags. Type a query there and press Enter and it hands the text to search, so you can start typing before deciding which one you needed.