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I am using Apples's Mail application for a while. I know that to search for mails from a particular user, I need to use 

from: [email protected]

But I need to search for emails that are not from a particular user or has a particular subject. Basically a negative/negated search.

I tried below search queries using boolean operation, but these didn't work.

 NOT from: [email protected]

 NOT subject: Hello World

Any help on this will be appreciated.

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  • I think what you are asking is not reachable.
    – rebatoma
    Commented Feb 3, 2016 at 5:02
  • You could make a rule like that, but not a search, afaik.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 3, 2016 at 7:34
  • @Tetsujin dont we have an advanced search option ?
    – Kannan Mohan
    Commented Feb 3, 2016 at 9:15
  • Not as far as I'm aware - though I've never needed one. I heavily sort my mail on the way in, using about 20 different rules, so I'm unlikely to not know where to start looking later. I'd really be tempted to rule-move [email protected] to another folder, then your search can be honed within your regular Inbox.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 3, 2016 at 9:25

2 Answers 2

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Mail can perform Boolean searches, but only in message contents, not in headers (such as Subject, From, or Date).

When using Boolean operators, always use uppercase — AND, OR, and NOT — so Mail doesn’t search for the actual words and, or, and not. You can use a minus sign (-) as a shortcut for AND NOT, so, if you type Jack -Jill in the Search field, you’ll see a list of all the messages that contain “Jack” but not “Jill.”

UPD. I've tried with my own mails and it looks like Mail DOES sort headers too. So try to enter into search field: abc NOT whatever-you-want-to-exclude. Shall work.

More info here: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22310?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

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Looks like booleans are now supported for search within in Apple Mail using message headers (e.g. from, to, subject).

If I want to find all emails from hogwarts.edu but excluding addresses containing the string weasley and the string malfoy, I take care with spacing, and punctuation, as well as using uppercase for booleans:

from:hogwarts.edu NOT from:weasley NOT from:malfoy

More info here (note that the support article doesn't specifically say whether headers can have booleans applied or not; my own success using them suggests they can): https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/search-for-emails-mlhlp1003/mac#apdea603c734e494

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