Mail 5 in Lion is the first app that’s caused me to spend significant time away from the Gmail web interface since I first fell in love with Gmail. What I thought would be a temporary fling has become a permanent affair.

There are lots of things I really like about Mail 5, but search is probably at the top of the list. It’s as fast as thought and extremely smart with the way it detects dates and names.

Just the other day, through experimentation, I discovered that I can exclude results by adding a dash in front of search terms (like a Google search).

For example, adding -linkedin to a normal mail search excludes all of the LinkedIn spam I’ve let accumulate in my archive.

Let me know about other Mail 5 search tricks you come across.

(h/t to my buddy, elasticthreads, for nudging me toward Mail 5 earlier this year.)