How to Search by Date in Gmail

Last Updated: October 25, 2022 Tested

If you're looking for an email or chat from a certain date in your Gmail archives, follow this simple search technique. If that's not enough, we've thrown in a few more advanced search terms to help you out.

Things You Should Know

Touch the magnifying glass to open the search bar. Then, enter the search terms "after:YYYY/MM/DD" to search all messages received after a certain date, and "before:YYYY/MM/DD" to search those received before that date.
Use both terms together to search a narrower range. Group the two terms to search for a message within a certain range of dates.
Use "older_than:" or "newer than" if you can't remember the exact dates. For example, newer_than:2m will return results from within the last 2 months.

Steps

1
Open Gmail search. On a computer browser, the search bar is visible at the top of the screen from any Gmail page. On a mobile device, you may need to touch a magnifying glass icon to open the search bar.
2
Search for emails after a certain date. To search for emails after a certain date, type after:YYYY/MM/DD into the search bar, replacing those letters with an actual date. For example, write after:2015/03/29 to search for emails written after March 29th, 2015.
- You can use the word newer instead of "after."
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3
Search before a certain date. You can probably guess this already, but the search "before:YYYY/MM/DD" will search for everything before the date you write. The word older will work instead of "before," if you prefer.
4
Use both terms to narrow down a range. You can use both of the above terms in the same search. For example, after:2015/03/29 before:2015/04/05 will list every message sent after midnight on March 29th, 2015, but before April 5th, 2015.
5
Use relative terms. For more recent messages, you don't need to work out the exact date. Use the terms older_than or newer_than instead. Here's how:
- older_than:3d = from more than 3 days ago
- newer_than:2m = from less than 2 months ago
- older_than:12d newer_than:1y = older than 12 days and newer than 1 year
6
Add extra terms. You can add ordinary terms to the same search, as well as other advanced search terms. Here are a few examples:
- after:2015/01/01 before:2015/31/12 rock climbing will list every message with the words "rock" and "climbing" from 2015.
- newer_than:5d has:attachment will list all emails with attachments sent within the last 5 days.
- before:2008/04/30 from:Jenna dance will list all emails from before April 30th, 2008, from Jenna, that include the word "dance."

Community Q&A

Question

It looks like Google deletes e-mails that are more than 5 years old. Is that true? If not, how can I find an e-mail that's more than 5 years old?

Community Answer

No. Type in the title of the email into the search bar. It is possible that it is still there, especially if you've sorted it into a special folder.
Question

How can I find all email with no user defined labels in Gmail?

Eddie Keith

Community Answer

Go to the drop down arrow within the search box. In the drop-down menu next to "Search," select Mail & Spam & Trash. Fill in the boxes with the information you're looking for. At the bottom, click Search.
Question

I want the inbox to display by latest date, how do I do so?

Community Answer

By default, Gmail's inbox displays e-mails starting from newest (at the top) to oldest, which means your request is fulfilled by default.

Warnings

Do not use a different format for the date. Entering the date with the year at the end instead of the beginning, for example, will show the wrong results.

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