Yahoo! Mail Tutorials

Searching for Messages

Quick Searches Searching for Messages Narrowing Your Search Results More Search Tips

More Search Tips

You can also limit the results that Yahoo! Mail finds when you search for a message by including some additional information (called "modifiers") with the search string. There are many possibilities you can try:

  • Search for exact phrases—To look for a specific phrase consisting of two or more words, enclose the phrase in quotes when you enter it in the search box. For example, the string:

    Example of searching for an exact phrase

    produces only search results that include that exact phrase. Messages with just "birthday" or just "party" are ignored (as are messages with "birthday parties" or "party birthday").

  • Eliminate specific strings from the results—To have Yahoo! Mail ignore messages that contain irrelevant strings, entire the string to be ignored preceded by a hyphen into the search box. For example:

    Example of eliminating a string

    finds all messages that include the string "birthday" but not the string "jack". (In other words, messages with both "birthday" and "jack" or any string containing "jack" are ignored.)

  • Search by subject—Yahoo! Mail normally searches all parts of the email messages, including all senders, recipients, subjects, message bodies, attachment names, and most attachment contents. To limit the search to just the subject of messages, include the modifier subject: in front of the search string (with no space in between). For example:

    Example of searching by subject

    finds only messages with "birthday" as part of the subject. Messages with "birthday" anywhere else, such as in the message body, are ignored.

    Tip: Doing a quick search by subject is the same as using the subject: modifier.

  • Search by sender—To limit the search to just the senders of messages, include the modifier from: in front of the search string. For, example:

    Example of searching by sender

    finds only messages with "jack" (or strings including "jack", such as "jackie") as part of the sender information. Messages with "jack" anywhere else, such as in the subject or message body, are ignored.

    Tip: Doing a quick search by sender is the same as using the from: modifier.

  • Search by attachment type—To limit the search the messages that include a particular type of attachment, include the modifier attachmenttype: in front of the search string. For example:

    Example of searching by attachment type

    finds all messages with JPEG or JPG attachments.

Search modifiers can be a great tool. You can even combine multiple modifiers in single search. For example:

Example of combining several search modifiers

tells Yahoo! Mail to search just for messages with the exact phrase "birthday party" in the subject from someone other than "jack". That’s pretty specific!

 

What’s Next

When you use modifiers to limit your search, you can also further refine the results as described in Narrowing Your Search Results. Some modifiers that you enter, such as sender or attachment type, also show up as search criteria in the Results narrowed by area.

Modifiers appear in the Results narrowed by area.

For more details and examples, see the Yahoo! Mail Help article on search modifiers.

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