Inbox Search

In this guide, learn how Inbox Search works, how to search effectively, and how to navigate your search results, all so you can find what you need effortlessly.

How Inbox Search works

Upon signing up, InMoat classifies and sorts the emails in your primary mailbox into searchable tags. (Note: InMoat currently does not scan through messages that have already been placed in mailbox folders)

Classifying and sorting emails can take up to 30 minutes or more depending on how many emails you have. 

If you are on the Free plan, InMoat will only scan back up to 90 days from the day you sign up. To search against your full email history, upgrade to a paid plan to start the scanning process. 

InMoat Search has three key components: Search Tags, Search Bar, and Results.

Search Tags

InMoat provides built-in search tags for common use cases and priorities, so you can quickly identify any type of email on the fly.

By default, InMoat will list the tags associated with your emails as you can see in the image below. 

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To narrow in on specific emails using search tags, click the “Filter by tags” drop-down menu (located to the left of the search bar). 

Selecting a tag will showcase only the results that match. You can also select multiple tags at once. 

Note: InMoat will present tags ONLY if there is a matching email. For emails that InMoat could not classify, there will be no tag associated. 
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Search Bar

InMoat’s search bar looks seemingly like every other standard search box, but behind the scenes, it’s way more intelligent. 

Synonyms

InMoat understands the intent of common email search queries, which allows it to account for synonyms and other variations of a commonly used words and phrases. 

For example– let's say you search for the term receipt, but the email you’re looking for doesn’t actually contain the word receipt. Instead it contains variations of receipt such as “payment confirmation” or “order confirmation”. With InMoat, you’ll still get the relevant results despite searching for the wrong terminology. 

Typo Tolerance

Searching quickly when you’re in a rush can accidentally lead to typos, leaving you with unhelpful search results and potentially missed emails. 

Fortunately, InMoat can detect typos for commonly used search words. For example, if you accidentally misspell the word ‘receipt’ as ‘reciept’ or ‘receitp’, InMoat will intelligently detect this and understand your intent, retrieving the same results for you regardless. 

Search as you type

InMoat searches your query as you type. You will notice that results will change instantaneously as you begin typing. 

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Search Results

The process of querying an email is one thing, the way the results are retrieved and displayed is another. InMoat provides an intuitive way to interact with your search results– ranking relevancy, displaying higher ranking emails atop, customizing views, performing actions, and more.

Understanding relevance scoring for results

InMoat places the most relevant results high up at the top of the list rather than traditional inbox search results, where results are displayed in the order of the most recently received email at the top. 

Rather than recency, InMoat prioritizes the ranking of the search intent itself in correlation to the ranking of matching keywords and/or tags associated. This combination proves to be a more powerful and accurate representation of what a user is truly looking for. 

Ascending views

To help narrow and filter your results even further, InMoat treats email search results like a spreadsheet or database with columns and rows, where you can change the ascending order of columns. 

With InMoat, you can view your emails by 'Newest to Oldest', or 'Oldest to Newest'. 

Additionally, you can arrange the ascending order for other columns, such as sender or subject, alphabetically from 'A-Z' or 'Z-A''. 

Viewing the original email

If you found an email you were looking for or just want more information about a specific email, you can open it directly from the search results, which will take you to the actual email in your mailbox.

To open an email, hover your cursor over the ellipsis on the respective email → select “Open in Gmail” or “Open in Outlook” (depending on your email provider). 

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Search Limitations on the Free plan

Full Email History

If you’re on the free plan, you can search back up to 90 days from the day you signed up. For example, if you signed up on January 1st, 2024, you can search retroactively for emails dating back to October 1st, 2023. 

To unlock and search your full email history, upgrade to a Paid plan.

Performing Bulk Actions

Bulk Actions are not available on the Free plan. To perform a bulk action, upgrade to a Paid plan.

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If you’re in need of a search tag, contact us at support@inmoat.com with your request.