I'd like to clean up my Gmail inbox and want to search for messages from people who are not in my contacts.
Ideally it would be something like:
-from:(is:contact)
but is:contact isn't an actual advanced search operator/value.
Gmail – Search for messages from non-contacts in Gmail
contactsgmailsearch
Related Solutions
The previously-posted answers are no longer correct.
On the General tab under Settings is Create contacts for auto-complete:
- When I send a message to a new person, add them to Other Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time
- I'll add contacts myself
Screen shot:
The second option will prevent Gmail from auto-creating contacts for you.
You can't do that under gmail's contact quick search but you can sync your contacts and use your preferred application (or even Outlook) to search them. As a bonus, you get synced calendar.
Another option within gmail is enabling keyboard shortcuts, typing g+c then / to search, and g+i to go back to inbox. At least to me that's quick enough.
Best Answer
It's not the most efficient way, but you get results.
Export your Gmail contacts into a .csv
Extract the names from the .csv (with Google Docs)
Create a massive filter with all the names
from: -(name1 OR name2 OR name3)This last step will probably be best done with a string/file manipulation macro/script. If you'd like to try it, I can write one in AutoHotKey.