Gmail: How to Sort by Oldest or Newest

Many people are looking for a way to sort your messages in Gmail.  Currently the only way to sort is by Oldest or by Newest.  You can do this in any Label or in any search results. The image below shows how this can be done in the Spam folder, but the process remains the same. I used the Spam folder because I thought it would be fun.

Essentially, at the top of any view (search or label) you will see a number 1-100 of NN next to the page arrows at the top. If you hover your mouse over that you will see a small drop down appear that gives you options of Newest or Oldest. It always is defaulted to Newest.  If you choose Oldest, it't technically not re-sorting it for you, it is bringing you to the last page of your emails in that view.  So to page through the emails in an Oldest selection, you will page back instead of page forward as in the Newest selection.




Thanks to +stefan ketola for bringing this hidden gem to my attention.

Comments

  1. You're welcome Scott :) Glad I've been able to contribute something useful to the community.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This just takes me to the oldest messages - it doesn't re-sort them for me.

    Am I missing something?

    ReplyDelete
  3. My oldest and newest are greyed out

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure why, can you try clearing your cache?

      Delete
    2. That means you don't have enough messages in your box to go to the next page, reduce the number to say 10 and that will hopefully trigger the pagination and therefore give you this trick, still pretty lame that we can't do a REAL backwards sort.

      Delete
  4. So again, this has nothing to do with actually sorting your emails - you're simply shortcutting to the newest or oldest page. Your emails are still sorted newest on top.

    ReplyDelete
  5. does not work bro. All greyed out

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Its not greyed out for me unless there is only 1 email in that view. Try clearing your cache. Also test in an incognito window to see if one of your extensions is causing the issue

      Delete
  6. The Google Mail client is the lamest one I have ever seen. Can't they see what MS Outlook can do?

    Jan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hate to laud Microsoft but they are light years ahead of Google and Gmail. Gmail is just terrible.

      You can do ten times more in Outlook. I don't want to go back to a desktop client so I'm looking for another web app to replace Gmail.

      Delete
    2. Agreed! I thought MS Mail was bad, this is nuts.

      Delete
  7. If you want to have the newest email at the top in a Gmail conversation thread you can do this with this extension:
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/conversation-flip-for-gma/omgafkmhdchplpcobfbmhioiobcpnpjb

    ReplyDelete
  8. First of all thanks scott

    You can go into settings and turn off conversation mode at get e-mails in date order just like Outlook. To sort in any other order you need a client program/app.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Is there a way to sort by size and oldest/newest? I'm looking for a way to display all emails larger than a specified size, showing the oldest ones first. Haven't yet found a way to do that.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No but you can search using advanced search for emails larger than a certain size of the

      Delete
  10. What does one have to do to get Google to gives us the chance to view our Inbox mail from Oldest to Newest? It's so frustrating to read a message, respond to it must to find out that someone much further down the list has already responded or to read answers before having seen a question.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed - Search is nice, choice is awesome (sort).

      Delete
    2. (on the desktop - not in app) click the number in the top right eg 1-50 of 24'000 and it will give you an option to sort by oldest. No way of doing this from within the app I believe.

      Delete
  11. When I hover, I don't see the 'oldest/newest' options appear. I only see "See more messages". Has this feature been removed from Gmail? I have a HUGE inbox with 9,500 messages, and ai want to clean the unread messages out oldest first.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope it depends on the type of Inbox you are viewing if you go to settings under the gear icon, then choose Inbox, then change the inbox type to Default, you should have that option again

      Delete
  12. My Gmail does not have that choice (oldest/newest), just "See more messages." Any ideas why?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment