For those of you who are Gmail (or Google Apps Mail) power users, here’s a little hack that I figured out.
I use the “to:” and “from:” Gmail search parameters all the time to pinpoint an e-mail that I’m looking for. But have you ever wanted to find an e-mail that you know was the *start* of an e-mail thread (thread = what’s referred to in the official Gmail lingo as a conversation)? Well, even though Google Mail hides ‘em from you in conversation view, all reply subject lines still contain the standard “Re:” string and all forwarded e-mail subject lines contain the standard “Fwd:”.So all you have to do is take the search you’re doing and have it exclude any subject line that contains Re: or Fwd:!
For example, if I’m looking for every e-mail from my friend Shashi that he originated (vs. an e-mail that he might have been received and subsequently replied to), I’d do a search like this:
from:shashi -subject:Re: -subject:Fwd:
[...] Thanks to Rakesh [...]
Pingback by Searching Gmail with Parameter’s — November 7, 2008 @ 8:45 am
[...] can further refine results by adding terms and qualifiers to the string already in the search box. Gmail tip: searching by the first post in a conversation [Rakesh Agrawal's Blog via Google [...]
Pingback by McColley.net » Blog Archive » Search for Conversation Starters in Gmail [Gmail Tip] — November 11, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
That’s a great tip!! Thanks a ton!!
Comment by NoeL — November 29, 2008 @ 11:37 am