How to Search and Find Emails Tagged with Multiple Labels in Gmail
Gmail provides a convenient way to categorize and organize mail messages by using labels, replacing the commonly used folders. The advantage of labels is that users can easily apply more than one or multiple labels to an email message. However, Gmail doesn’t provide a direct and obvious way to let users to select only messages tagged with two or more labels. You can easily click on a label to view all mails associated with that label, but not emails with two and more labels.
To show email search results that only include messages that apply with all labels you want to search, simply combine all these labels in the search query. The labels can be of default predefined Gmail labels such as Inbox and Sent Items or user-defined labels.
For example, to read all emails that contain both label “Criteria A” and “Criteria B”, but not messages that only has one of the labels, type the following queries in the Gmail search box.
label:Criteria-A label:Criteria-B
For more labels, just continue append the label to the search queries. Note that – (dash) used to represent space in Gmail search.
Tip: “label” operator can be shorten to just “l”. So for those lazy to type, label:Criteria-A can be just typed as l:Criteria-A. Users able to use “in:label name” or “is:label name” operators too.
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September 3rd, 2009 16:11
my bad.. it DOES work..
September 3rd, 2009 16:10
not working for me
February 5th, 2009 18:59
But is there not_in:label
cause if you have 2 or 3 labels on a mail, and you want to see emails only in label 1 and/or label 3, but not in label 2?
October 29th, 2008 22:14
Cool, thanks for the tips. I’m confused on your last tips, however.
What would using “in:label name” or “is:label name” do? Isn’t is: just used to search for a message status (like is:unread or is:starred) and in: used to search withing a specific location (in:trash or in:inbox). It doesn’t seem like it would make a difference whether you used them or not when searching by label.
February 6th, 2008 07:31
I always wanted this capability and thought there must be a way to do it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Labels are so much better than folders, which is why Gmail is my primary email program.
November 20th, 2007 12:08
Good tips but somehow I still not very get used to the label in Gmail. I’m still prefer the folder method as in MS outlook. It somehow looks more organize. Perhaps I don’t know how to fully utilize the label yet.