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How to Search and Find Contact Email Addresses in Gmail Inbox

Your Gmail inbox likely contains hundreds or even thousands of emails from various contacts over the years. Being able to easily search for and find the email addresses of those contacts can save you a lot of time when you need to email someone again. Here are some tips for searching your Gmail inbox to find contact email addresses.

Access Your Gmail Contacts

The easiest way to find contact email addresses is to access your Gmail Contacts. Here’s how:

  • Open your Gmail account
  • Click on the Contacts icon on the left sidebar (looks like a person silhouette)
  • This will open your contacts list where you can search contacts by name or email address

Pro Tip: Click on “Most Contacted” at the top left to view only your most frequently emailed contacts.

Search Your Entire Gmail Inbox

You can also search your entire Gmail inbox to find email addresses:

  • In the Gmail search bar at the top, type the contact’s name or company
  • Scroll through the search results to find emails from that contact
  • The email address will be visible next to their name for each email

Things to search:

  • Contact’s full name
  • Contact’s company name
  • Combinations like “John Appleseed” or “John from Acme Company”

Use Gmail Search Operators

Gmail has search operators that allow complex searches. Here are some useful ones for finding contacts:

  • from:[email protected] – Shows all emails from a specific email address
  • to:[email protected] – Shows all emails sent to a specific email
  • from:acme.com – Shows all emails sent from a specific domain
  • cc:[email protected] – Shows all emails CC’d to a specific email

You can combine these to narrow results even more, like:

from:[email protected] to:[email protected]

Extract All Email Addresses

You can extract ALL email addresses you’ve ever emailed within Gmail:

  • Click on the Contacts icon
  • Click on “More” > “Export” on the left sidebar
  • Select “All Contacts”
  • Export format: Google CSV
  • Save the exported CSV file containing all email addresses

This CSV file can also be imported into other apps like Excel for managing your contacts externally.

Find Email Addresses in Gmail Search Results

When you search your Gmail inbox, email addresses often show up right in the search results without having to open the email.

Ways they appear:

  • In the “From” field
  • After the @ sign of replies
  • In the email content

So search for a contact’s name and scan the results for email addresses matching that contact.

Check “Most Contacted” List

Your “Most Contacted” list contains your most frequently emailed contacts over time.

  • Click on Contacts > Most Contacted
  • This displays names AND email addresses for your top contacts
  • Great way to quickly find the email of someone you email often

Use Google Contacts

Your Gmail contacts are synced automatically with Google Contacts. Use this to your advantage:

  • Go to contacts.google.com
  • Search for contacts by name or company
  • View their email address in Google Contacts
  • Useful when not logged into Gmail

So in summary, searching your Gmail inbox and leveraging tools like Contacts, Most Contacted, and Search Operators makes finding contact email addresses much faster. Use the steps outlined above to unlock the many email addresses stored within Gmail.

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