How to search in Front
Overview
Front has many options to help you search through your history effectively. Typing in words directly into the search bar will search all parameters for the matching term, or you can use search filters to narrow down your results. Front will show you the most relevant search results in the search dropdown, and chronological results below that.
Ways to search
Search bar
Click the search bar at the top of your Front inbox to pull up the search menu. Type in your keywords and you will see automatic suggestions in a dropdown; press Enter to see a full list of results.
Search by inbox
The dropdown menu at the left of the search bar gives you the option to choose between searching the inbox that you're currently viewing, all items in your sidebar, or All inboxes. The more specific the inbox, the better the results are.
If you'd like to search a specific inbox, you can either:
- Open the inbox in your sidebar, then click the search bar and select the inbox from the dropdown, as shown in the screenshot above
- From any inbox, you can select All inboxes from the dropdown, then further refine your search by using the inbox search filter (explained below)
Advanced filters
View the full list of Advanced Filters either by clicking the down arrow in the search dropdown, or by typing the + into the search bar. See the Search filters section below for an explanation of each filter.
Search builder
Click the icon to the right of the search bar to open the search builder. This menu gives you a simple way to build your search using the fields: From, To/Cc/Ccc, subject, message body, tag, or status. The From and To/Cc/Bcc fields will automatically suggest email contacts as you type. You can enter one value per field.
The search builder will also remember your search settings even when you close the menu. It will reset once you conduct another search using the search bar.
Search filters suggestions
After all of your searches, you will see suggested filters to further refine your search. These intuitively suggested filters are designed to make it faster to find that one conversation you need.
Click on one or more of the filters to apply them to your search. To remove a filter from your search, simply click the filter again to unselect it.
Important to know
- Search results match your exact search terms. Searching for Pete will only show results containing Pete — not Peter or Peters.
- Front supports searches by prefix. If you're looking for an email from Mathilde Collin, you can type math* or coll* without quotations.
- To search an exact phrase, use quotation marks around your search phrase to search an exact match, like "Weekly Team Update".
- You can stack multiple search filters.
- The ranking of the "Top results" suggestions displayed in the search dropdown after typing in your search is based on whether and how often the search term appears in key fields like recipient, subject, body, comments, etc. Each field has different weights. We also give higher weights to recent results as they are more likely to be relevant.
- The Trash and Spam folders are not automatically included when you search for keywords. If you want to include these folders, use the is:trashed and/or is:spam filters in your search.
Search filters
Using filters in your searches will help you narrow your search to specific team members, inboxes, recipients, and so on.
Inbox name, Inbox type
- inbox:inbox name - search conversations in a specific inbox
- type:inbox type - refines your search to conversations of a specific channel type (email, tweets, SMS)
Subject, Body
- subject: - refines your search to conversations with this content only in the subject
- body: - refines your search to conversations with this content only in the body
Teammates
- assignee:teammate name - refines your search to conversations assigned to a specific team member
- author:teammate name - searches for messages and comments sent by one of your teammates
- participant:teammate name - refines your search to conversations that a specific teammate participated in
- mention:teammate name - refines your search to conversations that a specific teammate has been mentioned in
- commenter:teammate name - refines your search to conversations with comments left by a specific team member
- follower:teammate name - refines your search to conversations followed by a specific team member
Reminder, comment, or attachment
- has:reminder - refines your search to conversations that have been snoozed or where a reminder has been set up
- in:comments - refines your search to conversations where comments have been made
- has:attachment - refines your search to conversations that have an attachment
- in:attachments - refines your search to conversations where the text match is inside these file types: PDF, CSV, XLS, XLSX, DOCX. It's only possible to search in attachments content for emails. Attachment content coming from channel integrations is not searchable.
Contacts
- recipient:contact - refines your search to conversations with a specific contact either in the From, To, CC or BCC fields
- from:contact - refines your search to conversations sent by a specific contact
- to:contact - searches for conversations sent to a specific contact. This will include both CC-ed and BCC-ed recipients as well
- cc:contact - refines your search to conversations with a specific contact in the CC field
- bcc:contact - searches for conversations with a specific contact in the BCC field
Conversation status or type
- is:assigned - searches for assigned conversations
- is:archived - refines your search to archived conversations
- is:discussion - searches for all of your internal discussions
- is:open - refines your search to conversations either assigned or unassigned
- is:shared-with-me - searches for conversations that appear in your Shared with me folder
- is:snoozed - refines your search to conversations that have been snoozed
- is:spam - searches for conversations marked as spam
- is:starred - searches for conversations you've starred
- is:subscribed - searches for conversations that you are subscribed to
- is:trashed - refines your search to trashed conversations
- is:unassigned - refines your search to unassigned conversations
- is:unread - refines your search to conversations with unread messages
- is:unreplied - searches for conversations that haven't been replied to yet
- is:unsubscribed - searches for conversations you have unsubscribed from
Tags
- tag:tag name - refines your search to conversations tagged with a specific tag. You'll want to use an underscore ( _ ) in between words when searching for a tag name that includes multiple words.
For example, if you want to search for a tag named "Everything is awesome", you should enter exactly: tag:everything_is_awesome in the search. - has:no-tags - searches for conversations without any tags applied
Dates
- before:date - searches for messages before or on a certain date. Example: before:2016-08-31
- after:date - searches for messages after or on a specific date. Example: after:2016-08-01
- during:date - searches conversations received or sent during a specific day, month, or year; if you need to search between two specific dates, use the before and after filters. Example: during:2016-08
To enter specific dates, use the following format: YYYY-MM-DD
36 replies
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Is it possible to search for multiple tags at once? Often a single conversation is tagged more than once (for specificity) and being able to search for emails with a certain combination of tags would be very helpful.
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It seems you have a bug, where if you search for to:sample@email.com and probably add any other filter, the to: filter will incorrectly include reply-to, which is really weird. I have only tried this with (to:sample@email.com subject:"sample subject" ) - in that case, I receive results where the subject is "sample subject" and the to is NOT sample@email.com.
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How can I search comments in a particular folder for specific words? For example... In a specific folder I want to find all emails that have comments containing the word "Ellis".
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Is it possible to disable the "top results" in search?
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molly.jones@etix.com "top results" cannot be disabled in Front at this time
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Lemuel Chan Please make the "Top results" disableable. That is the most annoying "update" in Frontapp so far. And the divider for Newest/Oldest after Top results is hardly visible. Plus there is no apparent logic to what is displayed there in Top results. I care to have the latest email displayed chronologically, not some "suggested" search results.
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Marek Hi! We are working on an update to make the top results suggestions separate from the chronological results, and allow you to choose the chronological results view instead. We will be releasing this in the coming weeks and you'll see that available in your app. Thanks for this feedback, we hear you!
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Is there a way to disable search terms being highlighted permanently? For example, if I search "Company" it's now highlighted in all emails so if I snip the email for training purposes, there is now an unnecessary bright yellow highlight every time "Company" is mentioned. If I try to open it in a new window, it keeps the highlight. If I remove the search filter to remove the highlight, the email goes away or remains open still highlighted.
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Ayja Saylor Hi there! Front lacks the ability to disable this setting. However, if you view the message itself in an external window (instead of the full conversation) it should remove the highlight.
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Hi! Just checking in to see if there's a way to disable "top results" when searching yet.
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Amber Jones Hi there, currently we don't offer the option to disable "Top results".