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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.

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migrated from superuser.com May 14 '12 at 13:23

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote

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.

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Do filters have a real or practical limit? I've got hundreds of contacts. – Al Everett May 14 '12 at 17:56
I've found vague answers indicating ~1500 characters. You may have to perform multiple filters. For example, filter out your closest friends and put the mail into a different folder, then take out mailing lists, etc. – Ampersand May 14 '12 at 18:31

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