Gmail Search and Filters ~ MagicAndi's Blog

10 Aug 2018

Gmail Search and Filters

A quick post about the idiosyncrasies of searching and filtering in Gmail. As a long time Gmail user (since 2008), I’ve made significant use of filters and labels to organise my emails. I also make use of several different domains and email accounts that I manage using Gmail as aliases. However, as I look to move off Gmail and away from Google services, I want to identify exactly who is emailing me with what email address. Specifically, what emails are sent to an alias using the plus operator (andy+newsletter@gmail.com instead of andy@gmail.com)?

Note, andy@gmail.com is NOT my email address, it is simply being used in this post as an example.

To help with this, I have deleted all my existing labels and filters in Gmail, and created new filters that label my mail according to the email address it was sent to, using search terms like to:(*@gmail.com), to:(*@googlemail.com) and to:(*@andyparkhill.co.uk). Note, I since have read and confirmed myself that the wildcard operator “*” doesn’t really work in Gmail search.

By default, the to:(*@gmail.com) filter will capture any email sent to aliases using the plus operator (like andy+newsletter@gmail.com), but it will not capture email sent to aliases that make use of periods (like an.dy@gmail.com).

I had hoped to be able to create a separate label for email sent to the email aliases, but after spending significant time reading up on Gmail search operators and experimenting, I now realise that this is simply not possible. Instead, I can use the existing Gmail label to help search for any emails sent to my Gmail aliases (using the plus operator) using the following search term: