How to Find Old Emails in Gmail

Go to https://www.gmail.com . If you are not already logged into your account, you need to log in now.

Click the triangle button

located to the right of the search bar. The search filter options will appear.

Click the “Date Within” menu near the bottom of the search filter options.

Select a date range. You will be able to choose a start and end date range. “Date within” has many options, from 1 Day (1 day) to 1 Year (1 year).

Click the line next to the “Date Within” line. To the right of this section there is a calendar icon. A calendar will appear for you to choose a date.

Select date. Click the date on the calendar that you want to select. Click the ” < ” or ” > ” shaped button at the top of the calendar to jump to the next or previous month.

• Make sure that the ” All mail ” section in the next line next to the “Search” heading at the bottom of the search filter is selected.
• You can refine your search further by entering the recipient/sender’s name or email address in the “To:” or “From:” lines of the search filter options. To search by sentence or word in an email or subject line, type it in the “Has the words” line.

Click Search . This blue button is at the bottom of the search filter options. Emails that fall within the time range before and after the date you select will appear.

• Or you can find emails that fall before a specific date by typing “before:” and the date in the format YYYY/MM/DD in the search bar. For example, you can find old emails by typing before:2018/04/08 in the search bar.
• You can also find emails in a date range by typing “after:” with a start date in the YYYY/MM/DD format, followed by “before:” and an end date in the YYYY/MM/ format as well. DD into the search bar. For example, you can find emails in May 2019 by typing after:2019/05/01 before:2019/05/31 in the search bar.
• You can narrow down your search by entering the recipient’s/sender’s name/email address after the date, or keywords/sentences in the body of the email.

Go to https://www.gmail.com . If you haven’t logged into your account, proceed now.

• If you’re using Gmail on a phone or tablet, tap the red and white envelope icon labeled “Gmail” located on the home screen or app drawer.
• This method will find all messages located in your Gmail account, including emails that you have archived.

Click or tap the search bar at the top of the screen.

Enter keywords in the search bar at the top of Gmail. Here are a few different ways you can search by specific keywords, recipients, and senders:

• Search by sender: Enter the syntax from: sender in the search bar, where “sender” is the name or email address of the person who sent the message.
• Search by recipient: Enter the syntax to: recipient , where “recipient” is the name or email address of the person you sent the message to.
• Search by word or sentence: Enter the syntax "word or phrase" , where “word or phrase” is the word or sentence you are looking for.
• Search by subject: Enter the syntax subject: word , where “word” is the word in the subject that you remember.
• You can also combine search keywords. For example, if you want to find an email from webmaster@wikihow.com with the subject word “learn”, enter: from:webmaster@wikihow.com subject:learn .
• See also find by date to learn how to review emails that are before, after, or between a specific time range.

Press ↵ Enter or ⏎ Return . Search results will appear in date order from new to old.

• If you’re on a computer, the number of emails that match your search will show up in the upper-right corner of the results. This number will display something like this: “1-50 of 133” (number will vary depending on actual), you can use the arrow buttons located on the right to see the next page of results.
• If there are hundreds of search results or more, you can reorder the results from old to new. Click the result number, then select Oldest .

Go to https://www.gmail.com . If you haven’t logged into your account, proceed now.

• Apply this method if you want to review or recover emails that were previously deleted from Gmail.
• Deleted emails remain in the Trash folder for 30 days before disappearing forever. After 30 days, these emails cannot be recovered.

Click the Trash folder located in the menu along the left side of the screen. A list of all messages that have not been permanently deleted will appear.

• If you only see icons instead of menu option names, click the trash can icon.
• You may need to click More at the bottom of the menu to expand the list.

Open email. Click the email header to open it. The original content of the email will appear.

Click the folder icon with the arrow pointing to the right. This icon is at the top of the screen, below the search bar. This is the “Move to” option. The menu of folders in Gmail and Google account will drop down.

Click Inbox . This option is in the drop-down menu that appears when you click the “Move to” icon. The email you choose will be moved from the Trash folder to the Inbox folder.

Open Gmail on your phone or tablet. The app with this red and white envelope icon is usually located on the home screen (iPhone/iPad) or the app drawer (Android).

• Apply this method if you want to review or recover emails that were previously deleted from Gmail.
• Deleted emails will remain in the Trash folder for 30 days before disappearing forever. After 30 days, these emails cannot be recovered.

Tap the ≡ menu in the upper left corner.

Click Trash . Depending on your screen size, you may need to scroll down to find it. A list of emails that have not been permanently deleted will appear.

Tap an email to open it. The original content of the email will appear. If you want to recover this email from being permanently deleted, continue with the following steps.

Tap the ⋮ menu in the upper-right corner of the screen, to the right of the small envelope icon.

Click Move to near the top of the menu. A list of folders and inboxes will appear.