I am starting a new series today called Pet Peeves. Each post will be a short rant on something that really irks me, usually something technology-related.
I have been bothered countless times by the number of people who don’t know how to use their search box in their email clients. I can’t name a single client today that doesn’t have one. I’m even willing to bet, that the ones that don’t have died out for obvious reasons.
You know what I mean by search bar? THIS:
There’s a good reason that box is there, to search for your old emails!
I say “use me for Pete’s sake”, since I have received far too many emails from peers saying “Hey, could you send me that email again?” Back in the dark days of high school, I remember having constantly to put up with people who for some reason or another refused to touch that search box. I’d end up sending them the same email or link about 4 times, and every single time they managed to lose it.
My point is, if someone sends you an email, you shouldn’t have to ask them to send it again unless you accidentally deleted it or a meteor crashes into one of Google’s data centers (in which case we’d be dealing with a totally different story). Use the search box to look for the email that the person sent you.
If you’ve never used it, here’s some tips to find that lost email:
- Do you know the person’s email address? Type their email address into the search box.
- If you don’t know their email, type in the name that’s stored in your email client’s address book or contacts.
- If you’re still drawing a blank, do you remember approximately when (date and/or time) he/she sent you the email? Some clients allow you to search by time, or, you could manually sort the emails by date and look around the date in question.
- If that fails, try searching for any keywords that could’ve been in the email, like “dinner invitation”. Keep the search query short (a few words) but descriptive enough to narrow down your search.
Some email clients have really good search features. On Gmail, for example, you can click the down-arrow on the very far right next to the Search button, allowing you to search by:
- Who sent the email
- Who is/are the recipeient(s) of the email (in the case of multiple recipients)
- Subject of email
- Contains/does not contain word(s)
- Contains/does not contain attachment(s)
- Date range
My favorite is the Has Attachment option, as that option alone narrows down emails to a point where I can almost instantaneously find the email I’m looking for.
So next time you’re working on a project, save your members/co-workers a bit of grief and use the search box. You should re-request the email if and only if you have tried searching for the original email at least 3 different ways.
