Find messages with email search tool in Yahoo Mail

Quick Steps to quickly search for messages in Yahoo Mail:

1. 1 Click inside the big search box at the top.
2. 2 Type one or more keywords and hit Enter.
3. 3 Click on "Advanced search" to narrow down your results.
4. 4 Enter text into one or more text fields in the advanced search popup.
5. 5 Click on the "Search Mail" button.

Launch a basic email search

To search for any kind of match in your inbox and other folders, click inside the big search box at the top of the page. Type one or more keywords, and hit Enter or click on the "Search Mail" button:

Note: Yahoo Mail even saves searches you've last performed; to find again messages that match certain keywords, just click on the set of keywords under "Recent Searches". (And note that you can delete recent searches by clicking on the corresponding "x" button - highlight in screenshot below.) To erase all your recent searches, click on the "Clear" link, underlined in red below: 

Sift through search results

Yahoo Mail will load all matching results in a listing where the content of your email folders is usually displayed. Your search query will be conveniently highlighted in the subject line if it appears in it. (The first line is always an ad, not an actual search result.) Just click on a message to open it:

Tip: clicking on the "Search Web" button, or on one of the suggestions under "Web search" will open a Yahoo search results page in a new browser tab / window - you can do that right from Mail!

Perform an advanced email search

In most cases, the basic email search -if specific enough- will bring up the email you were looking for. Otherwise, you can either click on the "Advanced search" button at the bottom of the basic search results, or on the "Advanced search" link at the end of the auto-complete suggestions box:

Advanced search fields

The advanced search is just a list of text boxes mapped to standard fields. The concept is simple: just type the piece of information you want inside the corresponding field! Here's a brief explanation of each search field, and how to use it when applicable:

• Use the "From" and "To" fields to find messages by email sender or recipients (To or Cc), by typing a partial email address or person name - as u type, Yahoo will auto-complete suggestions based on the contacts you added to your address book.
• Type inside the Subject field any word or words that you remember appeared in the title ("subject line") of the message you are looking for. To search inside the message body (the text the email contains) type inside the "Contains" field instead.
• The "Date" field, set to "Any time" by default, can be used to narrow down your search in time. Pick "In the last 7 days" or "In the last 30 days" to find messages you know you received in the past week or month.
  
  To enter a custom date range, choose "Custom date" from the dropdown menu. Then, enter a start date and end date in the text boxes that appear, with year first, followed by month and date. Although Yahoo Mail shows two digits, a single digit will work for numbers under 10. If you enter a start date only, Yahoo will search for messages that were received on or after that date. The second date is therefore optional:
• By default, the Folder dropdown shows "All except Trash": in other words, Yahoo Mail will search in your entire account. If you know in which the message should be, just select it.
• Next to Type, "All email types" is selected by default; this is the widest (most unrestricted) search; optionally pick another value:
  • "Unread" for unread emails, or those you marked as Unread.
  • "Starred" to only search for flagged messages.
  • "From people" is a bit confusing: it's not like the first field (From) - it just instructs Yahoo Mail to search for messages sent by individuals, as opposed to newsletters and other mass mailings.
  • "Shopping", "Travel", "Social updates", and "Finance" are just mapping to the default categories Yahoo automatically applies to messages (the clickable "Smart Views" visible below your email folders inside the left pane).
• Finally, you can filter down your search to only showing messages that contain file attachments (check the "Has attachment" checkbox), or pictures (check the "Has image" checkbox).
  
  When you are done, click on the "Search Mail" button at the bottom!

Tip: the more information you provide, the narrower your search. In doubt, leave out some information: even with thousands of messages in your account, the result will come quickly.

Using Yahoo Mail's advanced search operators

As you start using advanced searches, you'll notice that behind-the-scenes, Yahoo populates everything you pick with "operators", or words with a special meaning followed by a colon:

You can type them yourself in the basic search box at the top - here are the 8 search operators:

• "from:" (sender) followed by a quoted name. Example: from:"John Doe".
• "to:" (recipient) followed by a quoted name.
• "subject:" followed by a quoted list of words. Example: subject:"Your birthday".
• "after:" followed by a date in the format "year/month/date". Example: before:2015/01/31.
• "before:" followed by a date in the format "year/month/date".
• "in:" followed by a quoted folder name. Example: in:"Folder Name".
• "is:" followed by a category (smart view) name. Example: is:starred, is:unread, etc.
• "has:" followed by the words "attachment" or "image". Example: has:attachment.

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