Rebuild 20 years of address history from Gmail for a rental or mortgage form with Gemini Spark

Posted

Oct 22, 2026 by Ben Patterson (PCWorld)

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Last checked

Oct 22, 2026

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Method:

How we verify

Evidence: Article or interviewA newsletter, journalist or interview account of what happened.

Outcome

Ben Patterson had struggled the year before to list past addresses and dates for a co-op application. For PCWorld, Patterson gave Gemini's Spark agent, with its Gmail connector, a prompt asking it to search all mail for leases, move-in and deposit emails, utility start and stop notices, change-of-address confirmations and order shipping addresses, and build a spreadsheet with dates, a confidence level and links to the proving emails. Within a few minutes Spark produced a reasonably accurate rental history back to 2006, marking which dates it was confident about and which it had inferred from orders and bills. Patterson ran the same prompt with ChatGPT, Claude and Muse agents and got similar results, with Spark's the most thorough.

AI tool

Gemini Spark

Exact prompt as published in the source.

What the prompt labels mean

I need my address history for a form that asks where I’ve lived for the past [X] years. Search all of my Gmail, including archived mail, from [START YEAR] to today.
1. Look for anything that shows where I lived and when: leases and rental applications, move-in/move-out and security deposit emails, utility and internet start or stop services, USPS change-of-address confirmations, DMV or voter registration confirmations, mortgage or closing emails, insurance policies, and changes in the “ship to” address on my own orders.
2. Create a new spreadsheet called “My address history” with one row per address, newest first: full street address, city, state, ZIP, earliest month I lived there, last month I lived there, how confident you are (confirmed by a lease/closing/USPS email, or inferred from orders/bills), and links to the 2–3 emails that prove each date.
3. Flag any gap or overlap of more than one month between addresses, and list what kind of email would settle it.
Only use addresses and dates you can link to an email. If you can’t pin a date down, write “unknown” rather than guess. Don’t include anyone else’s address (gifts, people I shipped to). Don’t fill in or submit any form, sign in anywhere, or contact anyone.

Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to.

Goal: Build a dated list of every address I've lived at, with proof, for a form that asks for my address history.

Fill in before running:
- How many years the form asks for: [YEARS]
- Email account to search, including archived mail: [ACCOUNT]
- Addresses I already remember, if any: [LIST OR NONE]

Rules:
- Use only addresses and dates you can link to an email (lease, closing, change of address, utility start or stop, voter or DMV confirmations, my own order shipping addresses).
- One row per address, newest first, with move-in and move-out month, a confidence level and links to the emails that prove it.
- Write 'unknown' instead of guessing a date, and flag any gap or overlap of more than a month.
- Leave out anyone else's address, such as gifts or people I shipped to.
- Don't fill in or submit the form, sign in anywhere or contact anyone.
- Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify.
- Before you finish, list the dates you inferred rather than confirmed so I can check them against my own records.

Output: A spreadsheet of my address history with proof links and a short list of gaps to check.

You'll know it worked when: every year the form asks about is covered, and each date has a linked email or is marked unknown.

Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.

Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to.

Goal: Build a dated list of every address I've lived at, with proof, for a form that asks for my address history.

Fill in before running:
- How many years the form asks for: [YEARS]
- Email account to search, including archived mail: [ACCOUNT]
- Addresses I already remember, if any: [LIST OR NONE]

Rules:
- Use only addresses and dates you can link to an email (lease, closing, change of address, utility start or stop, voter or DMV confirmations, my own order shipping addresses).
- One row per address, newest first, with move-in and move-out month, a confidence level and links to the emails that prove it.
- Write 'unknown' instead of guessing a date, and flag any gap or overlap of more than a month.
- Leave out anyone else's address, such as gifts or people I shipped to.
- Don't fill in or submit the form, sign in anywhere or contact anyone.
- Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify.
- Before you finish, list the dates you inferred rather than confirmed so I can check them against my own records.

Output: A spreadsheet of my address history with proof links and a short list of gaps to check.

You'll know it worked when: every year the form asks about is covered, and each date has a linked email or is marked unknown.

Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.

Source

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3266244/i-needed-20-years-of-address-history-gemini-found-it-for-me-in-minutes.html