Gmail needs advanced filters

[Leah Perlmutter]

Filters are simple enough that your average gmail user can understand them. However, they fall short of the basic needs of the gmail power user.

Filters need the following features:

1. Language reference for all syntax of the mail filtering/search language
2. Wildcard matching 
• e.g. "from:*sup...@example.com" matches mail from "alpha....@example.com", "beta.s...@example.com", etc.
3. Negate any filter operator 
   
• e.g. "NOT from some...@example.com"
4. Operator for exact string matching, including case and punctuation, excluding synonyms 
   
• e.g. "[ERROR]" does not match "[failure]" or "ERROR" or "[Error]"
5. Apply multiple labels based on the same filter
   
6. Filter Cloning
7. Ability to name and order filters
   
• currently filters are ordered based on modification time
8. Ability to organize filters in a tree so it's possible to apply a filter only to messages that match another filter

[Zack (Doc)]

These make interesting suggestions, you should consider submitting them.  As a comment on some of them...

1.  Not sure I understand this one, would you mind elaborating?

2.  This has been discussed many times, but not sure anyone has ever actually suggested it.

3.  This is already possible, https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en, -from:some...@example.com

4.  Makes sense

5.  Just repeat the filter and make another label, it works.

6.  If you have a large number to do you can export filters and import, otherwise, they are basically text searches, so just copy and paste it in.

7.  Naming would be helpful, but ordering is not necessary, they all happen simultaneously.

8.  Couldn't this just be accomplished by a complex search, with multiple matches?

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[stefan ketola]

agree with 5

sometimes I apply 5 labels to an email - it\s a pain in the @rse to have to repeat the steps 5 times over !!!

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[Andy]

1) 

​

Language reference for all syntax of the mail filtering/search language

​Are you looking for a Reference guide to filters, that lists all the search rules and filter rules?​  There is a table of most of the search syntax.  It is not 100% complete because Google seems to try new ideas from time to time, and has leftovers that still work but aren't documented:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en#7190

The Help function works pretty well for finding answers (but it is too massive for my taste).

2) Wildcard matching - Yes it's been a long-standing problem.  Add your suggestion to Google.  Maybe with enough votes from users it might persuade them to add wildcards ... but which type??

In some cases, Gmail parses things that you might not think would be split up; for example, sup...@example.com MIGHT find alpha....@example.com.  Or maybe not.  I'm pretty sure searching for "@example" seems to match "som...@example.com".

4) Exact strings including punctuation.  Yep, bothers me too.

7) Ability to name and order filters.  I would really like to order them too, and make them retain that order.  As a workaround, you could export your filters, edit the .xml to change the order, and re-import them.

8) 

​

Ability to organize filters in a tree so it's possible to apply a filter only to messages that match another filter.

You can have a filter depend on a label (which came from another filter).  Gmail may tell you that it won't work, but it actually does seem to work.  Aside from that, you can make filters quite complex; i.e., filtering based on multiple parameters, even entering a long description in the "Has the Words" field that includes "from:" and similar search expressions.

Andy