How to Remove Addresses Like 123456@ or a@ From a List (Filter Emails by Shape)

To remove addresses by how they look, read the part before the @ and set aside the rows with the shape you do not want: very short, digits only, many separators. The filter emails by address shape tool does this in your browser. You tick the shapes, choose remove or keep, see how many rows have each and download the kept file and the set-aside file with the shapes named.

Treat every shape as a hint, not a verdict.

The shapes

It looks at the part before the @ only.

Shape	What it means
Very short	Two characters or fewer, such as a@
Digits only	Nothing but numbers, such as 123456@
Four or more digits	Often a birth year, such as sam1987@
Very long	30 characters or more
Many separators	Three or more dots, underscores or hyphens
+tag	Has a plus sign, such as sam+news@
first.last	Two words of letters joined by one dot
One word	Three or more letters, such as sam@

A +tag is left out of the length and digit rules, so sam+news@example.com is judged as sam.

Step 1: do it by hand

In Excel, add a helper column with =LEFT(A2,FIND("@",A2)-1) to pull out the name, then use =LEN(B2) or a test for digits and filter on it. The formula errors on rows with no @. A pure-digits test needs a longer formula such as =ISNUMBER(--B2), which also treats 1e5 as a number. This works for one shape at a time and is slow to combine.

Step 2: use the filter

1. Upload the CSV or .xlsx, or paste the cells with the header row first.
2. Pick the email column and tick the shapes to act on.
3. Choose to remove the rows with those shapes or to keep only them.
4. Read the set-aside file, then download the rows kept.

An address can have several shapes. 42@example.com is both very short and digits only, and the set-aside file names every shape that matched. Rows with no address go in a separate file and are never counted as kept or removed.

Why these are rules of thumb

Real people have short or numbered addresses, and dead mailboxes can look perfectly normal. A shape says how an address looks and nothing about whether a mailbox exists. That is why removed rows go in their own file, and you decide whether to drop them. For placeholders and keyboard mashing, use the fake email checker; to see which shapes your list has first, use the email address pattern analyzer. See how to check if an email address is fake.

When keep-only helps

Choosing keep with first.last ticked leaves addresses that read like a person's name, which some teams prefer for a first outreach batch. Tick one word too and you also keep sam@. Role addresses such as info@ are one word as well, so use the role-based email filter for those.

What this cannot do

• A shape is a rule of thumb about how an address looks, not proof about the mailbox.
• It reads only the part before the @, never the domain.
• Real addresses with numbers or short names match some shapes.
• Only the first sheet of a workbook is read.

Verify the addresses that remain

Shape checks look at text. Only a mailbox check shows whether an address exists. Upload the kept list on the verify page: the first 100 email checks are free with a Google sign-in, no card. Each address comes back valid, risky or invalid with a reason, and nothing is sent to anyone on the list. For larger or recurring lists, see bulk email verification, list cleaning and pricing.

Filter your list now

Upload it to filter emails by address shape.