Gmail – How to search within an attachment in Gmail

attachmentgmailgmail-search

Gmail allows me to search using the operator as 

has:attachment *.txt

How do I further filter this to search for a specific word in a file?

E.g. to search for a PDF that contains the word ATLANTICO, I've tried this without success:

has: attachment *.pdf ATLANTICO

Best Answer

I'm afraid you can't. Looking at Gmail help, there's nothing related to searching within attachments.

You can specify a file name, but that's it:

filename:physicshomework.txt

Or you could save files you want to search through to Google Docs.

The simple explanation why it's not possible is that it would require a tremendous amount of indexing to be done. Gmail search isn't that fast to begin with, and I can imagine it'd take far too long to search within attachments.

Also note that this is a feature that even most desktop clients don't do.

That being said, there seems to be a startup that focuses on what you want: attachments.me

Attachments.me indexes your email account and presents an attachments-centric view of it. We create thumbnails, let you search within attachments, and, above all, make your email better

Related Topic