Gmail Tips

Click for larger image and screenshots

Sort email by oldest first

When working in an email list it is often useful to start at the oldest email first. You can do this by clicking on the email count and selecting 'Oldest'.

Select any email list and, where you have an accurate count (eg 1 - 50 of 500), hover on the count to see a drop down showing the options Newest and Oldest. This will sort the email in that list by date - newest first, or oldest first.

Where there is only a estimate (eg 1 -50 of many) it is an indication that GMail has not yet counted all your email in the chosen list and the sort option will be greyed out.

Comments/Feedback

Shana Tarter

Has anyone found a workaround to the comment below? Mark Williams Good spot, that is correct. It seems Google feel you don't need to sort if you can see all the email on a page. So, if you have the number of conversations set to 100, and the count is less than that you won't be able to sort. Set the number of conversations (in the General Tab) to 25 and you can sort a smaller list! It seems strange to me, maybe Google will fix this. 29 February at 10:05

26 February at 20:32 • Reply to this comment • Edit

anne wood

clicking on "oldest" to see older emails only gets me back to April 2012. I have saved almost all my gmail since 2007 and had been able to get to it by going one page at a time. How do I access it with more ease?

29 January at 12:30 • Reply to this comment • Edit

Mark Williams Hi Anne, I'm not sure whether the Oldest has a limit on how far back it goes - or whether it changes as Gmail indexes your search. But take a look at the tip we have on advanced searching for email - you can search around a set of dates so easily find email from 2007. gAppsTips

29 January at 13:35 • Edit

Richard Bready

Doesn't seem to work for Inbox, which is the first place most people would like it to work. Options appear but are grayed out.

26 January at 06:40 • Reply to this comment • Edit

Mark Williams Hi Richard, It does work for Inbox Classic. But it will only work for a view where there is a "full count" ie 1 of 18,000 would work but 1 of many would not. gAppsTips

29 January at 13:33 • Edit

Attila Szabó

Ohh I see, thanks Mark. So can I make a filter out of a search, that looks for the yellow sticks(important mail) and whats in my inbox (not archived)? Will sort work on that search? If so what would that search string look like? Thanks a lot, Attila

15 August at 14:45 • Reply to this comment • Edit

Mark Williams The search string would be "in:inbox is:important" - but I'm not sure whether you can then sort by Oldest - it depends how many emails you have in your inbox that are designated as important. The sort only works on accurate counts. Try it and let me know if it sorts.

15 August at 15:01 • Edit

Attila Szabó

The tip only works if you are using the standard inbox versions. It does not work on the priority version. Any idea?

15 August at 11:55 • Reply to this comment • Edit

Mark Williams Hi Attila, The sort will only work where you have a "count" - ie where you have an email lookup. Priority inbox is not a "count", it is a summary of recent emails - so there is unfortunately no way to sort. If you create a label or a search, you can then use this tip. gAppsTips

15 August at 12:04 • Edit

Mischka Hughes

Both the Newest and Oldest options are greyed out form me unless I have more than 1 page of results in my list.

29 February at 09:59 • Reply to this comment • Edit

Mark Williams Good spot, that is correct. It seems Google feel you don't need to sort if you can see all the email on a page. So, if you have the number of conversations set to 100, and the count is less than that you won't be able to sort. Set the number of conversations (in the General Tab) to 25 and you can sort a smaller list! It seems strange to me, maybe Google will fix this.

29 February at 10:05 • Edit