Find email

Search your inbox to find the email you need.

In this section: 1 Search your inbox 2 Narrow your search 3 Clear your search history

1 Search your inbox

1. Open Gmail.
2. At the top, in the search box, enter your search criteria.
   • When you search a person’s email address, the results also show email that includes their alias. To limit the search to only the original email, enclose the search criteria in double quotes. For example: "from:john.doe@gmail.com".
   • When you search “from:email", the results also return Drive files shared by that email address.
3. Press Enter.

2 Narrow your search

To narrow your search, at the right of the Gmail search box, click Show search options .

Add specific search criteria. For example, you can find an email from Alice that has an attachment within a particular time frame.

For details on using search filters, see Use filters when you search.

3 Clear your search history

1. Click the search box. Your most recent search may show.
2. Go to the search and click Delete .

You can also clear your search history from Google servers. Learn how to delete your activity.

To learn more about advanced searches, see search operators in Gmail.