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Character limit for gmail filter

I’ve found the character limit for a gmail filter is between 1,469 – 1,488 characters. If you do anything more than 1,488 characters, you’ll get this error when saving the filter:

mail.google.com says The specified filter is too long. Please specify shorter filter search criteria.

If you keep your filters under 1,469 characters, you’ll be ok.

What am I doing with a 1460-character filter?

I’m making a gmail filter so if anyone in my address book emails me to my secondary email address, that email will get forwarded to my primary email address.

I have two email addresses. The primary email address is for people I know. The secondary email address is for signing up for things. That way, my primary email gets very focused emails. I don’t get lots of junk. However, sometimes people I know still email me at my secondary email address.

I don’t want to miss these emails.

So I exported all the email addresses in my address book, and I’m making monster-long filters. Each filter looks something like this ooks something like this:

from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected]) OR from:([email protected])

I was trying to see how many email address I can stuff into one filter. The answer is between 1,469 to 1,488 characters. That’s 45 to 46 email addresses per filter.

Now a series of filters that will automatically forward emails from anyone in my gmail address book.

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