DIGIT-ARC read-only archive · snapshot: July 23, 2026

Use Emoticons to Search Gmail

6 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/use-emoticons-to-search-gmail.93633/

rhitwick
rhitwick Original post #1
Jul 21, 2008 at 4:22 PM
In Gmail, every built-in view (inbox, trash, read mail) is actually a label. And since Gmail doesn't use folders, if you use the service, you'll end up searching a lot. For example, to view all the unread messages from the inbox, you search for label:inbox label:unread. To create more involved queries, you can combine the built-in labels with the labels you assign. But such queries can become long and hard to write. Fortunately, you can replace the word label with l and everything will still work fine. The previous query will become: l:inbox l:unread.
That query still too long? Great news: Gmail has shortcuts for the special labels:
^b chats
^f sent mail
^i inbox
^k trash
^r draft
^s spam
^t starred messages
^u unread mail
That means our query could become: l:^i l:^u. What about all the unread messages that aren't in the inbox? Search for: -l:^i l:^u. :).
This info might be helpful for many of us who has to go through a lot of mails:D

Source

T
Jul 21, 2008 at 8:40 PM
GMAIL SHORTCUTS
M
Jul 22, 2008 at 6:37 PM
Nice One.
Thanks for sharing..
casanova
Jul 23, 2008 at 1:37 PM
Thanks for sharing
Quiz_Master
Jul 27, 2008 at 12:15 AM
Yes.. Using them... Nice way to arrange and search mails.