How to find an archived email in Gmail in seconds
There’s a reason Gmail is the most popular email service. It works on computers, Chromebooks, iPhones, Android phones, andtop tablets. It integrates with the robust Google Workspace, makes full use of Google’s best-in-class search capabilities, and always adds cool new features.
One of its cool features is archiving emails, which was available when Gmail launched in 2007. The archive option can come in handy to clean up your busy Gmail inbox. You can archive old and unnecessary emails and remove clutter from the main inbox. Gmail doesn’t delete archived emails. They are readily available to access when you need them.
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The way Gmail used to archive emails
When Gmail was new, archiving emails worked like moving an email to a different folder. The email disappeared from the inbox and would be visible in the readily accessible archive folder. The only difference between archiving an email and moving it to another folder was the prominence of the archive button, both in the inbox and within an individual email.
Users could find their archived emails in one of two ways. They could either open the archive folder or search for it in the search bar at the top of the page. An “archive” label was easily found in the advanced search options if they wanted to search only the archive.
For those who want to browse archived emails, the folder is no longer readily available, and the archive label no longer appears in Gmail’s list of labels. Removing these two features seemed to force users to hunt down individual emails by remembering keywords to place in the search bar.
This is not the case. It’s still possible to browse all your archived emails without searching for each one individually.
How Google archives email today
Even though archived emails don’t appear in your inbox, and the archive label isn’t readily available, the emails still appear when you search for them. Any archived email that contains a search term automatically shows up alongside the unarchived emails. Gmail comes with advanced search filters to find any message in no time. Check our dedicated post to learn more aboutGmail’s advanced search filters.
You can also hunt down archived emails using Gmail’s search operators. Gmail’s search bar is a marvel when it comes to advanced search operators. You can search by sender, recipient, date, label, category, attachment, and more. There’s no shortage of operator combinations that will return all your archived emails and nothing else.
However, it’s not necessary to enter these complicated search terms. Even though you can’t see the Archive label in its regular locations, the Google search bar still recognizes it. To take advantage of this, enter the following text into Gmail’s search bar:
Type that in, run the search, and you’ll see all your archived emails.
Find archive emails in All Mail inbox
You can find archive emails from the Gmail All Mail inbox. Here’s what you’ll do:
Basic search filters
If you want to find a specific email instead of only seeing all the emails you saved, use Google’s search tools. To do this, click the filter icon next to the search bar. This gives you options to help you find your email.
Find archive emails in Gmail on phone
Gmail offersfeature-rich mobile apps on Androidand iPhone. You may accidentally archive emails on Gmail mobile as the default left or right gestures are set to archive messages. Here’s how you can find such messages on Gmail mobile:
Check your archived emails on the go
Archiving emails in Gmail doesn’t affect the storage. If you are low on Gmail space, check our dedicated guide tofree up storage in Gmail. You can also subscribe to one of the Google One plans to unlock more space for your account.
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