I have always wondered how to search for stuff in my mailboxes, and now, after reading the help pages, I have found out how to do that with some good precision!

Lets say I need an email with the keyword of "motor", from my contact named "amy", and sent after Jan 01 2009. This is what you would use in the search field for narrowing your scope of message selection:

motor from:amy date:>=01/01/09