Searching Email Messages

SmarterMail indexes all of the messages you receive, regardless of how you organize them in your folders. As long as the message hasn't been deleted and purged from your account, the search tool will find emails quickly and easily. SmarterMail also offers an Advanced Search feature that allows you to search across all of your folders — and even other areas like Contacts, Calendars, Notes, and Tasks — in addition to adding search criteria such as To and From addresses, date ranges and more.

Performing a Search

To perform a search, first go to the folder you want to search in. This can be your Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, any of the custom folders you create for organizing your messages, or shared folders. Next, click the magnifying glass icon near the top of the messages list to open the search bar, type your search criteria, and press Enter on your keyboard. SmarterMail will search the messages within the folder you are viewing and display the results. To clear a search, press Escape or click the X in the search bar; closing the search bar returns the folder to its normal view.

A basic search casts a wide net: your search term is matched against each message's subject, the From, To, and Cc addresses, the message body, the file names of any attachments, and any categories you've applied. So a search for "invoice" finds a message with "Invoice" in the subject, one that mentions invoices in the body, AND one with an attachment named "March-Invoice.pdf" — even if none of them use the word anywhere else.

Getting Better Results

A few behaviors are worth knowing, as they can help you refine any search:

Partial matches are automatic. Searching for "report" also matches "reports" and "quarterly-report", so there's no need to add wildcards for simple "contains" searches. (The * and ? wildcard characters are supported if you want to build more specific patterns.)
Use quotes for exact phrases. Searching for "budget meeting" in double quotes returns only messages containing that exact phrase. Without the quotes, you get messages that contain both words anywhere in the message — a much larger set.
More words narrow the search. When you enter several words, each word must appear somewhere in the message. If your search returns too much, add a word; too little, remove one.
Searches are not case sensitive. "Invoice", "invoice" and "INVOICE" all return the same results.
Email addresses are searchable. While most special characters, such as "#" or "%", are treated as separators rather than searched for, the "@" symbol and periods ARE preserved. That means you can search for a full address like jdoe@example.com, or a partial one like "example.com" to catch every message involving that company.
Very new mail may take a moment to appear. Messages are added to the search index shortly after delivery, so an email that arrived seconds ago may not be searchable for a brief period.

Note: The search bar only searches the folder you're currently viewing. To search multiple folders at once, or to combine criteria like sender, date range, and attachments, use Advanced Search instead.

Combining Search with Sort and Filter

It's also possible to use the Sort and/or Filter options on messages that were returned by your search. Sort arranges the results by Date, From, Subject, or Size (with a Reverse Order option), while Filter limits the view to messages that are Unread or Read, that have or haven't been replied to, that are flagged, that are linked to tasks, or that have attachments. While not technically a "search", being able to sort and filter your messages using specific criteria can assist with finding the messages you need. For example, searching your Inbox for "contract", filtering by Attachments, and sorting by Date quickly surfaces the most recent contract document someone sent you — three clicks instead of ten minutes of scrolling.