Let's explore the most useful Gmail search filters and their usage:
Q1: I have hundreds of unread emails in my Gmail Inbox but not all of them show up on the main page. Can I bring up view in GMail containing only unread messages.
A: label:inbox is:unread
Q2: My boss sent me a PDF document last month that I can no longer locate in the Inbox. Can you help me find it.
A: from:Name_Of_Boss filename:pdf after:2007/07/01 [yyyy/mm/dd]
Q3: I received an email from Paypal support last week. I am not sure if I deleted the message, archived it or marked it as Spam.
A: from:Paypal in:anywhere
Q4: I have dozens of unread email messages in the Inbox but I am in a hurry to check them all. Show me just the messages that are for me.
A: is:unread after:2007/09/03 to:your.email@address.com
Q5: Ryan is a good friend who send me pretty interesting PowerPoint / Word files that often have inspirational quotes, beautiful natural landscapes and funny slide shows of Cats. I love it all but they take too much space.
A: from:Ryan has:attachment [Select all and then delete]
Q6. I accidentally deleted an important email message from a colleague. My GMail trash is already overflowing. How do I retrieve that particular message.
A: label:trash Name_Of_Your_Colleague
Q7: I use GMail to automatically backup my WordPress blog. The database backup are stored via email attachments as Zips. Since I am running short on GMail storage, I would like to delete all backups that are older than two weeks.
A: filename:.zip before:2007/08/15 wordpress
Q8: While chatting over Google Talk, Veronica sent me a link to her Flickr pictures.
A: in:chat from:veronica flickr.com
Q9: Show me all emails from my Boss that he marked Urgent or Important in the subject.
A: from:Boss_Name subject:(Urgent OR Important)
Q10. I have two contacts in GMail with similar names - Peter King and Peter King Junior. Can I see emails the received from the former contact.
A: from:Peter King -Junior
Search Shortcuts: Instead of typing label:unread, you can simply type l:^u
Important: Unlike Google web search, GMail won't suggest search results that contain plurals or misspellings of your search query. For instance, a search for "computer" will only show email with that exact word - you won't see messages containing the word "computers".