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A form of 'Advanced search' for Mail.app Apps
Thu, Nov 29 2007 at 7:30AM PST • Contributed by: dennisbest
I often find that I need more than Mail's basic search. For example when I want to find an email from "Fred" with "Foo" in the title that has an attachment, etc. My usual method has been to create a Smart Mailbox, find the email I was looking for, then delete the Smart Mailbox.

It just occurred to me to keep the Smart Mailbox and name it "Advanced search..." Now I have an an advanced search in my Mail sidebar. To edit just double-click the mailbox icon and enter new criteria. As a bonus, my last search is always saved.
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A form of 'Advanced search' for Mail.app
Authored by: Mac Berry on Thu, Nov 29 2007 at 8:50AM PST
Good idea, but I wish Mail.apps advanced searches really were advanced.

For example, I can't do a search such as "From XYZ" or "from wxy", and "not in the pqr folder". I can only do "any" or "all" searches, making smart folders very limited and a long way from their true potential.

Same applies to rules.

Mark




[ Reply to This | # ]
A form of 'Advanced search' for Mail.app
Authored by: JonMountjoy on Thu, Nov 29 2007 at 1:47PM PST
They should follow Google. Let me type things like:

is:unread in:inbox from:jon "Mail's search could be improved"

You have to wonder why they don't. I'm sure they have the search infrastructure to do advanced search, which would dramatically improve the usefulness of Mail. For now, I must admit I am very happy with the vastly increased speed of search in Leopard (it's now quicker than logging into gmail and searching there, which is what I used to do).

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A form of 'Advanced search' for Mail.app
Authored by: shmuel on Thu, Nov 29 2007 at 3:33PM PST
You can actually use a format very similar to that, you just have to use Spotlight instead. See my comment below.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Many Ways to Search a Cat
Authored by: shmuel on Thu, Nov 29 2007 at 3:42PM PST

Leopard brought us a much (!) improved version of Spotlight which can be used to create very complex searches. Try typing in Spotlight, for example:

from:john subject:"Next Meeting"

This hint links to a full list of operators you can use in this manner.

For some reason this does not yet extend to Mail's in-app search function. I hope this is an oversight that will be soon fixed.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Many Ways to Search a Cat
Authored by: jonsey on Fri, Nov 30 2007 at 2:07AM PST
I'm finding Mail 3.1 (Leopard 10.5.1) to appropriately respond to this type of search. So it looks like the new Spotlight features are implemented in Mail.

I tried from:john subject:"Next Meeting" (I had a handful with "Next Meeting" in the subject, but I changed the from name since I didn't have one from John. But it did work properly I also tried a few other combinations all of which worked.

Sweet!

[ Reply to This | # ]
Many Ways to Search a Cat
Authored by: Mac Berry on Sat, Dec 1 2007 at 1:25PM PST
No, it's not a full implementation, and not even as powerful as the smart mailbox editor. What you used there acts as an AND search only (at least the editor offers either AND or OR), and you can't use boolean operators (AND, OR etc) as you can in Spotlight.

Mark

[ Reply to This | # ]
Many Ways to Search a Cat
Authored by: Mac Berry on Sat, Dec 1 2007 at 1:33PM PST
It doesn't work for Mail properly though, as far as I can tell. Try "from:john OR from: Bill". It won't find all messages from John and all messages from Bill (as opposed to all messages from John and Bill, which would be an AND search), and nothing else.

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A form of 'Advanced search' for Mail.app
Authored by: prescor on Fri, Nov 30 2007 at 4:58AM PST
This is something I've missed DEARLY since finally switching away from Eudora a year or so ago. Eudora had a very robust Boolean search engine and I used it frequently. Now I am forced to be less precise in my searches and manually skim the results to try and find what I'm looking for.

How hard can this be to implement?!

[ Reply to This | # ]

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