Gmail – Why Search ‘in:inbox is:read’ Does Not Work?

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I want to move first on read messages in my inbox then go to my unread messages.
I tried to use: in:inbox is:read but is give me wrong results.
I also tried this way in:inbox {NOT is:unread} But I got the same result.

I get all the read messages and few unread messages,
I tried to figure out why this happened and find out that all unread threads includes more than one messages (that say – it include one messages that is read).
Anyway, I want to see only read messages in this section.

I am new in this system, then if not clear please let me know.

Best Answer

It works as designed. It is showing you all conversations that have one or more read messages. If you want to only see the messages that have been read then you will have to disable conversations.

Under conversation view google would not know how to address conversations that were mixed, so they made a design decision.

For example if you asked for in:inbox is:read

if all the messages in a conversation have been read, then show the conversation.
if no messages in the conversation have been read, then hide the conversation.
if some of the messages have been read, show the conversation or don't show the conversation.

Sometimes the user would want to show them, sometimes not. They went with if any message in the conversation meets the criteria then the conversation meets the criteria.

Related Solutions

Gmail – Customize Priority Inbox

Yes you can do this but not without a little bit of hacking around.

From my answer at Equivalent of 'archive' for priority inbox \ multiple inbox :

The only way that I have found to do it is either with the element inspector in chrome/safari or with firebug in firefox. The good news is that once you have made the settings change it will work in all browsers.

Go to the priority inbox settings tab.
Click the options next to the section you want to show your work mail.
Click "More Options..."
Inspect the element for the "Work" Label
You will notice on the surrounding div there is an attribute cfg="^all,Work", change the value to "^i,Work"
Select the label on the page as you normally would

You will know if it worked or not straight away because the section settings should now read : Inbox, Work instead of the All Work that it used to read.

Here is a list of alternative commands you can use. You can chain commands together with a comma.

^i = Inbox
^u = Unread
^io_im = Important
^t = starred
^f = sent
^r = drafts
^all = All mail (include archive)

ie. ^i,^u,Work = all emails in your inbox, that are unread with the label "Work".

Gmail – In Gmail, can I show only unread emails for a label as a Section

A little bit late, but since I found this as the first result when searching for this very issue, I should add that it's possible.

Set up the priority inboxes and your labels, if they aren't already.

Apply a filter to archive "work" messages coming in so they skip the main inbox.

Go to Settings > Inbox > Options next to the inbox section you want to customize.

Click "More Options..."

Right-click or CTRL+Shift+C on the label (e.g., "work") and select "Inspect element." (Firefox users just go to Tools > Web Developer > Inspect Element and click on the label).

Look for the attribute cfg="^all,Work" and change the value to cfg="^u,^all,Work"

Finally, select the work label on the page as normal.

As seen on:
Customize Gmail's Priority Inbox View with a Super Simple Hack

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gmail – Customize Priority Inbox

Gmail – In Gmail, can I show only unread emails for a label as a Section

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