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Gmail Annoyances
Searching your gmail
Maybe your account is getting too close to filling and you want to search and delete messages smartly.
Note that if you delete them, they're not removed from your gmail space until you empty the trash. So the sequence of actions could be:
- Search for large emails, those from certain addresses, etc, and delete all of them.
- Empty trash.
| gmail search command | explanation |
|---|---|
| alphabet | find all mail with the word “alphabet” in it. Also finds those with “alphabets”. |
| from:george | find all mail from this person |
| to:martha | |
| subject:dinner | |
| OR | From:george OR from:martha |
| label:Adverts | |
| has:attachment | |
| “exact phrase” | |
| in:anywhere | Anywhere in gmail |
| in:inbox in:trash in:spam in:sent | |
| is:starred is:unread is:read | |
| after:2004/04/16 before:2004/04/16 | Msgs sent after midnight 4/16/2004 and before the start of 4/18/2004 |
| newer_than:2d older_than | newer_than:2d means, Messages sent within the last 2 days d (day), m (month), y (year) |
| size:10M | All messages of at least 10MB in size |
| +unicorn | Finds words matching unicorn exactly – not different forms like “unicorns” or misspelled “unicron” |
Examples
| in:adverts older_than:10d | all mail in the “adverts” folder older than 10 days |
| from:costco@online.costco.com size:5M | all mail from that address 5MB or larger in size |
| in:sent before:2020/09/15 after:2020/09/13 | all mail that you sent in that time period, midnight on 9/13 to maybe a message on 9/16 |
Offload messages from Gmail
Suggestions from a thread on/about 20may2021. The wiki's author, Steve, is trying things out. Here's his status;
- 23may2021 I am trying out Horcrux right now and will update this with my findings.
- I'll be trying Thunderbird next.
MacOS
Depending on the size of the mailbox, you may be able to accomplish this all with just drag-n-drop, but there are some powerful apps for Mac OS that support this kind of task, for example:
| URL | Program | Cost, notes |
|---|---|---|
| https://mailsteward.com/index.html | MailSteward | Lite: $25, Full: $50 Pro: $100. The differences are confusing. |
| https://www.mothsoftware.com/index.php | Mail Archiver X | $45, local archive. Like a regular backup; automatic archiving, with search capability. Pro version lets you access archives from multiple locations or a network drive (cloud). $150 |
| https://thehorcrux.com/ | Horcrux | $25, 30-day free trial. Automatic backup, restore and undelete capability. Access locally. Migrate to new email server. Uses IMAP (used by Gmail, Outlook, more). Multiple email account capability. |
| https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/ | EagleFiler | $50 single user; $80 2 users. “Organize files, archive e-mails, save web pages and notes, search everything” |
| https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ | Thunderbird | Free email application. “Thunderbird can be set up to work seamlessly with Google's Gmail. Messages will be synchronized between your local version of Thunderbird and web-based Gmail.” |
FWIW, there are a lot of reasons one might want to do a bulk download/archive of an email account, the most basic being the security of having a local backup copy. Others may just want to escape Google. And for people with super large email accounts (> 2 million saved emails), it becomes increasingly important to shunt older email into secondary storage just to keep an email client from collapsing under the load.
–Glenn P. Parker
Lifewire
I successfully downloaded 15GB of gmail (everything through the end of 2020) with these instructions:
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-export-your-emails-from-gmail-as-mbox-files-1171881
It went smoothly, and I can download more as I go along, and it should stay all in order.
I also successfully tried out the mail client claws-mail, with which I can read and search my now-downloaded mbox files.
https://www.claws-mail.org
As far as I know you can also send mail using claws-mail, though that's not how I'm planning to use it.
I created an account with a different mail provider.
Once I get myself all the way off of gmail, I can send and receive mail on that account
and stay under the tiny quota by routinely (weekly?) downloading received mail into mbox files on my own computer,
reading/searching these archives with claws-mail.
–J Tang
Google Takeout
I use https://takeout.google.com/ for all Google data downloads, including email. It's pretty straightforward and helps conserve my inbox space.
–Ethan Kiczek
Thunderbird
I use Thunderbird on my Mac but it’s available for Linux and Windows. It may not be the most user-friendly? But I’ve been able to keep and save emails and move them from one account to another (dragging and dropping) without issue.
I should add that Thunderbird is free and it downloads my emails to my computer. So, for example, I have an old work email that I sometimes want to look at for reference and I can without any issue.
–Adam Schwartz