Google-contacts – way to filter by multiple Groups in Gmail Contacts

google-contacts

In Gmail, let's say I have 7 contacts in Group A and 9 contacts in Group B.

2 contacts are in both Group A and Group B.

Is there a way I can filter to get results of only the contacts that are in both groups?

Best Answer

What you're looking for is the label: filter for the search bar.

It works on the mail/inbox section of Gmail but apparently hasn't been implemented in contacts yet.

If it worked you'd narrow the results by typing the following into the search bar:

label:Group-A label:Group-B

Short answer

Google Contacts search doesn't have the search operators to do such "search operations" [1].

Remarks

From [2] could be taken several helpful keywords like intersection and symmetric difference.

Alternatives

One alternative is to use spreadsheet functions to do set operations. See, from [3], Set operations with New Google Sheets. Reading [2] could be helpful to understand some terms used in the linked spreadsheet.

Examples of Google Sheets formulas

Assume that the email addresses of contacts of Group A are in column A and email addresses of contacts of Group B are in column B

Intersection (question 1, contacts in both groups)

=FILTER($A$3:$A,MATCH($A$3:$A,$B$3:$B,0))

Symmetric Difference (question 2, contacts in Group A or in Group B but not in both)

=FILTER($A$3:$A,ISNA(MATCH($A$3:$A,$B$3:$B,0)))

References

Gmail Filters – How to Add Filters and Labels to Groups in Gmail Contacts

I don't think Google supports this feature, but I found a workaround from 2008 that might still work:

Create the group in My Contacts

Compose an email to said group

Copy the "To:" field

Paste into the "Convert" textbox here

Copy the the "Convert" output into a new filter

Try it and let us know if it does what you're looking for.