Finding conversations

Sooner or later you'll need to dig out a conversation from months ago. Search finds it by what it said, who was on it, or what your team noted about it. When you can't think what to search for, All mail, Attachments and My Bookmarks give you other ways in.

Searching

Click Search mail at the top of the page, or press / when you're not typing somewhere else. On a narrow screen the box shows as a magnifying glass. Type what you remember and press Enter.

Search looks in subjects, message text, the names and addresses of the people on a conversation, and your team's notes. It covers every conversation you can see, so it won't find one in a mailbox you're not in.

If nothing contains all of your words, Jelly shows conversations that contain any of them.

A conversation your team has renamed can be found by its new subject or its original one.

Reading the results

Results are sorted by Best match: a match in the subject counts most, then the people, then the message text. To see the most recently active conversations first, choose Newest above the results.

The words that matched are highlighted. Click a result and the conversation opens at the message or note that matched, with the results still beside it. Close or Esc takes you back to where you were in the list.

A search shows its 200 best matches at most, 25 to a page. If what you're after isn't among them, add another word or an operator.

Narrowing a search

Words aren't always enough. To search by who sent a message, which label a conversation has, or when it was last active, use an operator: a word ending in a colon, followed straight away by what you're looking for. from:jane finds mail from Jane.

You can mix operators with ordinary words, in any order. label:billing refund finds conversations labelled Billing that mention a refund.

You don't need to memorise them. Press Narrow a search, above the results, to see the common ones.

An operator works on its own, too. is:unread lists every conversation you haven't read, newest first.

Operators

Anything with a space in it goes in quotes: label:"Bulk order", assigned:"Bob Smith", field:region="North America".

Combining operators

When you use several operators, a conversation has to match all of them. from:jane is:unread finds Jane's conversations that you haven't read, and label:billing label:urgent finds conversations with both labels.

The exception is in:, where any of the lists will do: in:spam in:trash searches both.

Dates

after: includes the day you name, and before: doesn't.

You can write a date as 2026-09-01, 7 Sep, 7 September, 7 Sep 2026 or 7 September 2026. Leave the year off and Jelly assumes this year. A date with a space in it needs quotes: before:"7 Sep".

A few things that might surprise you

• is:unassigned finds conversations nobody has picked up, which is what Brand new shows. It isn't the inbox's Unassigned section, which holds what your team has set aside.
• @bob finds notes where Bob was mentioned with an @, not notes that only say "Bob". If two colleagues share a handle, use the whole address to pick one: @sam@example.com.
• contact: searches what your team has recorded about a contact, not their mail.
• field: wants the field's key, not its name, and the whole value. Narrow a search lists your team's keys. Write a date as 2027-01-01 and a yes-or-no field as yes or no.
• has:attachment ignores pictures that are part of an email's design, such as a logo.
• A word with a colon that isn't an operator is searched for as it stands, so ticket:4521 finds mail that mentions ticket:4521. To search for text that looks like an operator, put it in quotes: "from:jane".

What search doesn't find

• Spam and the trash, unless you add in:spam or in:trash.
• The vault, unless you add in:vault.
• Attachment file names. Use the Attachments page to find a file by its name.
• The name your team gave a contact. Search finds people by the name and address in their mail.

All mail

All mail, in the left column, lists every conversation in one place, whether it's open, archived or snoozed. Only spam and the trash are left out. It's the place to look when you're sure something exists but can't think what to search for.

Attachments

Attachments, in the left column, shows every file that has come through your team's mail, newest first. It's for when you remember the file but not the conversation. Click a file's name to open or download it, or click the message under it to go to that message in its conversation.

The box at the top, Search files, and the mail they came on, works like the main search and takes the same operators. A file is found when its own name matches or when the mail it came on does. So quote.pdf finds the file by name, and invoice from:jane finds the files Jane sent in mail that mentions an invoice.

The page leaves out spam and the trash unless you ask for them, pictures that are part of an email's design, and files attached to your team's notes.

Bookmarks

A bookmark keeps a conversation on a shortlist of your own. Choose Bookmark (for me) in the conversation's More menu, or in the ⋯ menu on its row. Remove bookmark takes it off again.

Once you have a bookmark, My Bookmarks appears in the left column. Bookmarks are personal, so nobody else sees yours. To mark something for the whole team, use a label.