There is a search trick that a lot of people don’t know about… it’s the “negative” keyword.
If your initial search through your Gmail archives, Google Drive or even Google.com itself yields too many results, put a minus in front of a word you don’t want appearing in your results. Make sure there’s no space between the minus and the word you’re eliminiating.
This effectively narrows down your search results, using this “negative” keyword.
Example Google search: sun destination holiday -mexico > displays web search results for sun destination holiday that do not contain the word mexico
Example Email search: “from:([email protected]) subject:(You’ve got money) -USD” > displays only non-US dollar transactions
Example Google Drive search: “type:spreadsheet -title:(copy)” > displays only spreadsheets that don’t have the word “Copy” in the file name
If you want to exclude two or more words, put the – in front of curly brackets.
Example Google search: sun destination holiday -{Puerto Vallarta} > displays web search results for sun destination holiday that do not contain the words Puerto Vallarta.
Give it a try! It’s super easy. You can either use the minus when you’re typing in a text-based search, or you can use the “doesn’t have” dropdown inside of Gmail.
Note that for Google and Google Drive searches, you’ll have to manually add the minus to make the keyword negative.
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p.s. (Hack #7) This blog post is part of a series called Top 40 Google Hacks You’ll Wish You’d Been Using All Along. Download the whole handy Top 40 Google Hacks PDF.
