Advanced Searching in Clean Email

Using the search field at the top of Clean Email, you can find messages based on the subject lines, sender names, sender addresses, and recipient addresses.

In addition to basic words and phrases, you can use a variety of operators and keywords to narrow your search results.

Simply type the text you want to search for and press Enter.

Clean Email Search Basics

• Clean Email can search sender names, sender and recipient email addresses, and subject lines. Message bodies and email attachments are not searched.
• Clean Email can find search results matching as little as a single character. For example, if you type 'z' (without quotes) Clean Email finds all messages that include 'z' in any word found in the subject line, sender name, sender address, or recipient address.
• Searches are case-insensitive. For example, searches for ethan, Ethan, ETHAN, and EtHaN will all yield the same results.
• When viewing the All Mail Smart Folder or your Inbox, Clean Email does not search the Trash or Spam folders, so no messages in those folders are included in the search results. To search for messages in those folders, click select the Trash folder or the Spam folder and then use the search field at the top of the page.

Search Reference Tables

The following tables provide some examples of searches and the operators and keywords you can use.

Word and Phrase Searching

Searching for an Exact Match

When you need to find messages that contain an exact match for your search text, using double quotation marks can make all the difference. Check out these examples.

Scope Operators/Fields

Using scope operators, you can search for text in specific fields.

FROM

TO

CC

SUBJECT

LABEL

Note: You can also use IN in place of LABEL for any of these examples, e.g., IN:"Read Later"

IS

HAS

RECEIVED DATE OPERATORS

ATTACHMENT SIZE OPERATORS

Logical Operators

Using logical operators, you can combine more than one search term to further narrow the results in a single search.

AND

The word 'and' (in any case) is reserved for use as a logical operator. If you need to search for messages that include the word 'and', search using double quotation marks, like this: "and".

OR

Like the word 'and', the word 'or' (in any case) is reserved for use as a logical operator. If you need to search for messages that include the word or, search using double quotation marks, like this: "or".

Group Search

Using parentheses (), you can group multiple search terms together at once. Clean Email treats the terms as if you had entered the AND operator between each one.

Note: Parentheses () and curly braces {} can only be used when searching the FROM, TO, SUBJECT, and CC operators.

They are reserved characters, meaning that they cannot be mixed with other characters when searching. For example, muscle car(s) is not a valid search because ( and ) are reserved characters.

You can also use curly braces {}, to group multiple search terms together at once. Clean Email treats the terms as if you had entered the OR operator between each one.

Note: label:{"Inbox" "Read Later"} is an example of an invalid search. It will not work because curly braces {} can only be used to search FROM, TO, SUBJECT, or CC–not label:.

Negated Search

You can use the hyphen or dash character to exclude messages that contain something from search results. If you need to search for the actual hyphen character itself, use exact match searching with double quotation marks. For example, instead of -20°, use "-20°".

Caution: Do not use negated search with a single word or operator when configuring Auto Clean rules, because every single message that does NOT include that word will be affected. Instead, add more conditions to the search query.

Reserved Characters

The following characters are reserved for use in search functions such as grouping and negated search:

• "
• -
• (
• )
• {
• {

With the exception of ", you can still search for these specific characters using exact matching.

For example, to find messages with an open parenthesis ( in the subject, subject:( will not work because ( is a reserved character. However, you could search for subject:"(".

Do you have more questions?

Please contact us and we will be happy to help.