Home → Email Help → Web Email → Searching
3.1. Searching
Web Email has three different ways of searching for messages
Quick search
This is a 'search as you type' browser side 'full text match only' search of the displayed headers of the current page of messages. This is useful for quickly locating certain messages without waiting for the delay involved in going to the server for more advanced searches.
Note: This will not search message bodies or other pages of messages in the currently displayed folder (see hint below)
| Full text match only: | |
|---|---|
| joe | All messages with the word 'joe' in any of the cached headers |
| joe blogs | All messages with the string 'joe blogs' in any of the cached headers |
HINT: When Enter is pressed a "quick search" will be automatically switched to a "folder search" under certain conditions. In particular: if there are multiple pages of messages in a folder, if advanced search syntax characters are found (colon or minus or double quote), or control-enter is pressed.
Folder search
This is a very fast server side headers search of all the messages in one or more folders. This search capability allows for the search for multiple search terms that are 'AND'ed' together (not OR) and allows for searching in in specific fields:
Note: This will not search message bodies, and only searches messages in folders that have already been accessed and indexed by surgeweb (manually refresh by right clicking a folder and select refresh or refresh all)
| Basic text searches: | |
|---|---|
| joe | All messages with the word 'joe' in any of the cached headers |
| joe blogs | All messages with the word 'joe' AND 'blogs' in any of the cached headers |
| joe blogs -foobar | All messages with the word 'joe' AND 'blogs' EXCLUDING 'foobar' in any of the cached headers |
| "joe blogs" | All messages with the string 'joe blogs' in any of the cached headers |
| from:"joe blogs" | All messages with the string 'joe blogs' in the from header |
| Specific field searches: | |
|---|---|
| email:joe@domain | All messages with 'joe@domain' in any of the recipient fields ie. a "conversation history" |
| from:jsmith@gmail | All messages with 'jsmith@gmail' in from address |
| to:joe | All messages with 'joe' in to address |
| subject:webmail | All messages with 'webmail' in the subject ie. a "thread view" |
| date:week | All messages received in the last week valid values: day, week, month |
| flags:replied | All messages that have been replied to valid values: seen, replied |
| attachments:any | All messages with attachments valid values: any, true, none, false |
| More complex searches: | |
|---|---|
| from:jsmith@gmail date:week | |
| All messages from 'jsmith@gmail' in the last week | |
| subject:confirmation -date:week | |
| Messages with the word 'confirmation' in subject older than one week | |
| from:joe subject:confirmation | |
| Messages from 'joe' with the word 'confirmation' in the subject | |
| -flags:replied -date:week | |
| Messages older than one week that have not been replied to | |
note: The "Recent" option only searches folders that have been accessed in the last month. The "All" option will search all folders but does not refresh the mesage indexes from IMAP so may not find the message you are looking for. Click any folders in question to refresh the indexes.
Body search
IMAP server-side search of the full message body and headers content. This can take a long time on large folders / or large accounts - expect approx 30 seconds per 100 MB of mail that needs to be searched through. One or more search terms can be specified which will be ANDed together.
Note: This may take a long time
| Body search syntax: | |
| joe | All messages with the word 'joe' anywhere in the message |
| joe blogs | All messages with the word 'joe' AND 'blogs' anywhere in the message |
| "joe blogs" | All messages with the string 'joe blogs' anywhere in the message |