Gmail trick: how to find and delete unnecessary mail so that you always have enough space?

Is your email inbox almost full? Gmail also warns us from time to time that the inbox is almost full and that we will soon no longer be able to receive emails. How do we get rid of it? With a few simple tricks.

The advanced search options in Gmail allow us many options that most users are not familiar with, but would still be useful. Read this article and you will manage Gmail in a better way.

From now on, you'll be able to find exactly what you're looking for in Gmail. The Google search window can adjust the search so that the entered words can be found more easily and, above all, more efficiently. Since the space in Gmail is limited, they will come in handy when deleting emails.

Sure, you all know about Gmail's email search engine. And this one works great. But if we get to know it a little better and learn to manage its advanced functions, our life will be easier. Let's see.

We have written the instructions based on Gmail as it appears on your home computer and accessed through a browser.

Simple search

Therefore, the easiest way is to search in the upper search window, where there is a magnifying glass icon and the inscription "Search by mail". But do you know what makes everything possible? You will be surprised.

Advanced but still simple options

Since you likely have thousands of emails in your Google email, it's not uncommon for a simple search to return too many results to find what you're looking for. That is why there is an advanced search in which you specify the criteria by which the search engine should search.

In the search bar, click the icon located on the far right.

A drop-down menu opens where you can limit the selection.

• In the field From you can search by email sender (the one who sent you the email).
• In the field For you are looking for who you sent the mail to.
• You can search for words that are in the box The matter.
• In the field Contains words enter the words that the searched mail should contain.
• In the field It does not contain you can enter words that are definitely not in the searched email.
• It is a very useful field when you want to get rid of emails Size, in which you can specify the size of the mail from-to. This way, you can find the emails that take up the most space and free it up more easily (although you will still have to delete a bunch of emails when the inbox is full).
• In the field Date in you search by date and can choose the oldest or limit the search to specific dates.
• Then there's the field Search, where you can search among all mail, received mail, and those with a star, among sent mail, drafts, chats...
• At the end, you can check whether the email contains an attachment (Contains an attachment) and whether to include chats in the search or not (Do not include chats).

You will be most effective if you choose several criteria to limit your search, as you will narrow down the set of results.

Searching in the main window using specific commands (still pretty simple)

You can also use some search terms that will make it much easier for you to find e-mails - they come to us whenever the e-mail box is full and we would like to quickly get rid of a few hundred e-mails. You enter the commands in the basic search window of Gmail.

There are many possible commands. Some have the same function as advanced search bars. You'll probably end up using just one or two. Which options you choose depends mainly on the user. Therefore, it will be best if we describe as many of them as possible, and you overestimate which ones are most useful for you.

• Subject: if you know what is written in the "Subject" of a certain email, enter the subject and add what is expected to be contained in the subject of the email. For example subject: holiday. All results that contain the word vacation in the "Subject" of the email will be displayed.
• From: this command finds the sender name and email address. If you want to find (and for example then delete - or not) an email from a specific sender, this will be the right command. It is not necessary to enter the entire email, only a part will suffice. For example from: simon finds all messages sent by a person named Simon in an email address.
• This: this command will find all emails you have sent to a specific person. For example to: simon.novak@gmail.com will find all emails sent directly to simon.novak@gmail.com (but not those in which simon.novak@gmail.com was added to Cc or Bcc) .These are copy and bcc.

• CC: finds those emails that you have sent and you have added the addressee to the Cc or Cc of the message. For example cc:simon.novak@gmail.com or cc: simon.
• bcc: finds those emails that you have sent and you have added the addressee to the Bcc or Skp of the message. For example bcc: simon.novak@gmail.com or bcc: simon.
• Is:unread: finds all unread messages.
• is:read: finds all read messages.
• is:important: finds all messages you've marked as important.
• Has:attachment: Finds messages that have any files attached. Advice on freeing up space in your e-mail if you run out of it: look for messages with attached files (attachments) and delete those you don't need. Messages with attachments, especially if they are, for example, photos, are much larger than messages that contain only text or those that have a simple Word document attached.
• Filename:.jpg: so you will search for emails by the name of the file that is attached. You can enter an extension like .jpg for photos, so you're searching filename: .jpg or by name if you know the file contains a word, for example filename:suncni-zahod.
• Is:chat: searches chat logs.
• After: this command searches for messages that were sent after a certain date, for example after: 2022/8/1 (first the year, then the month, then the day, you can also after: 2022/08/01).
• Before: works just like after, except that this is a command that searches for emails before a certain date, so before: 2019/11/3. Useful if you would like to find and possibly get rid of emails that were sent before November 3, 2019.
• Larger: very useful for finding emails that take up more space. Here you should know that the base unit is bytes. For example, we are looking for all emails that are larger than 200,000 bytes, we write them larger: 200000 (can also larger_than:200000). Instead of the whole number we can use k for kilobytes and m for megabytes. In this case larger: 200k. The command works the same way size: (for example size: 200000).
• smaller: (or smaller-than) searches for emails that are smaller than the size you specify. It works the same as larger.

Can I combine orders? (not for everyone, but worth a try)

• Of course, you can also combine individual commands by adding in between AND. after: 2019/6/7 AND before: 2019/06/24 and will find all emails between June 7 and June 24, 2019.

• "": quotes will find the phrase in the window The matter. For example "holiday by the sea" or "Anna's Anniversary".

• +: the plus sign will find a word where we know there was another one next to it that we don't remember.

• OR: OR will find emails that contain one or another word (one or another command), for example vacation OR sea. We can also combine from: simon OR larger: 15m.

• –: we use the minus sign to search for emails that we know do not contain something. For example - holiday will find all emails except those containing the word vacation. The subject becomes useful especially when we are looking for e-mails with the word vacation, for example, but we do not want them to contain the word Croatia. That's how we write holiday - Croatia. Or leave -from:simon. The latter are emails that contain vacation but not from a sender named Simon. There can be many combinations.

Tip: Google has a solution for everything and is trying to simplify search in yet another very useful way. For example, when we enter any command in the mail search engine in Gmail, for example larger: 10 m (finds all emails that are larger than 10 megabytes), it will suggest below the search window whether we want to include another filter (marked with a red box). We also marked a button with an arrow that opens additional filtering options, as described at the beginning. Display in the image below.