How to use "not" in Gmail filters?
I need to create a Google App Script to respond to machine generated emails, except those also sent to one colleague or contain a particular topic outside my responsibility.
I've been trying to use the GmailApp.search API which includes all mail from user X but NOT those emails which are also addressed to user Y NOR those containing "junk_term". I want the emails archived and to skip the inbox.
I created a query like so:
"from:([email protected]) -{[email protected] OR junk_term}"
But it appears not to return any results.
Answer
Fixing this problem requires understanding two things:
1) If a label has been placed on an existing email by a filter, the label stays even if that filter were deleted. One must delete the label itself, and then re-create a new filter in order to get your edits to "take".
2) There is a bug in the Gmail filter system. If you try to set up complex Boolean such as
from:[email protected] -to:[email protected] -junk_term
It will work fine on the initial search, but if you use it to create a filter, the terms, especially the NOTs, will be garbled.
The correct syntax, (hat tip to chenghuayang) is to ignore the to's and from's.
[email protected] [email protected] -junk_term