Gmail: Use and learn more About Gmail search in 2012

As you can imagine you can use Gmail search the same way you'd use Google Search, by entering a word (or multiple words) that appears anywhere within the message you want to locate. For example, if you're looking for a message that contains the word phone, simply type phone in the search field and click the search button.

Your results will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow.

However, Gmail doesn't recognize special search characters like square brackets, parentheses, currency symbols, the ampersand, the pound sign, and asterisks. It also doesn't recognize partial or similar matches, so a search for travel will find travel, but not travels, traveler, or travle.

If you're having trouble finding the result you want, you can refine your query by clicking the small arrow in the search box, and entering your criteria in the appropriate fields (or use our advanced operators).