Is it possible to query Gmail messages by timestamp?

Question

Is it possible to search all Gmail messages within a range more granular than the day?

For instance, could I search for all chat messages from 3pm to 5pm on October 4th? How would that look?

Looking at the Gmail advanced search reference I noticed that they mention the specific times, but do not specify the format, most likely it is not supported, but I thought I would check just in case I was simply entering searches in the wrong format...

Example: after:2004/04/16 before:2004/04/18

Meaning: Messages sent between April 16, 2004 and April 18, 2004.*

*More precisely: Messages sent after 12:00 AM (or 00:00) April 16, 2004 and before April 18, 2004.

Answer 1

It is possible to specify time range with accuracy up to a second, because the search operators after:, before:, newer:, older: accept Unix timestamps. Using a tool such as Epoch Converter, you can find out that

• 2014-10-04 at 15:00 (using GMT for example) has timestamp 1412434800
• Add two hours (7200 seconds), or use the same tool again: 1412442000

Searching for after:1412434800 before:1412442000 will return the messages within this 2-hour range.

Since converting to Unix time looks like a chore, I made a bookmarklet that makes this substitution in place.

For example, after typing

after:2015/07/26 10:00 before:2015/07/27 11:30

in the search box (which would not work as is), invoke the bookmarklet and the string will be replaced by

after:1437919200 before:1438011000

(The bookmarklet interprets the given timestamps in your local time.)

The page I linked has both the source and a draggable link with the bookmarklet. For completeness, the source code is also posted below.

inp = document.querySelectorAll('input');
for (i in inp) {
  if (/(after|before|newer|older):/.test(inp[i].value)) {
    str = inp[i].value;
    times = str.match(/\d[\d\/: ]*\d/g);
    for (j in times) {
      if (Date.parse(times[j])) {
        str = str.replace(times[j], Date.parse(times[j])/1000);
      }
    }
    inp[i].value = str;
  } 
}

Answer 2

The specific times are mentioned in the documentation to show that the "after" operator is inclusive of the date given, while the "before" operator is exclusive of the date. There is no way to use the search box on a more specific time range.

If you are using Google Apps Scripts, you can make your search using the best dates you have. Then you can filter the resulting threads based on Time and other criteria. Example:

var threads = GmailApp.search("after:2014/09/01 before:2014/09/02",0,100);
var timeFrom = new Date("2014/09/01 10:00:00").getTime();
var timeTo = new Date("2014/09/01 13:00:00").getTime();

for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++){
  var timeThreadStart = threads[i].getFirstMessageDate().getTime();

  if(timeThreadStart > timeFrom && timeThreadStart < timeTo){
    //do something
  }
}