Let’s have a closer look at the new search. First, here is the revised search criteria dialog. In addition to familiar features like date ranges and saved searches you now find a number of new features in this dialog.

Figure 1. Mail Search dialog including free text search.

In the new search, not only sender but recipients as well can be used as search criteria. Both the name and address of sender and recipients can be used to specify searches. You can use the Free text field to specify criteria that is matched to content in the message text and text-based attachment files (e.g. .doc, .pdf). It is possible to define both simple criteria (e.g. one word) and more complex criteria like a phrase (within quotes).

Both the Subject and Free text fields support the same character sets as the Mail client supports. Clicking the button at the end of these fields allows you to select the encoding and search messages written with, for example, Cyrillic characters.

The right hand side of the dialog is dedicated to specifying the search scope. Here you find a new feature that allows you to limit the search to received or sent messages or include both of them in the scope.

Now, let’s look at some search examples. Our first example is a search for a phrase. The phrase is embedded in quotes in the Free text field. Italian language is used here to illustrate that the search is not language dependent. And the matching result is found in the message text of one of the messages in this mailbox.

Figure 2. Example of a phrase search.

Our second example searches for a single term in the Free text field and this time the match is found in a Word document attached to a message.

Figure 3. Example of a single word search.

The third example illustrates the recipient search. Here you see that the message found is a one sent by the current user and located in the Outbox of the mailbox.

Figure 4. Example of a recipient name search.

You can naturally combine search criteria and, for example, specify a search for a recipient and a subject or a search for a sender and free text. In the first case only messages that have both the specified user or address as one of the recipients and the given word or phrase in the subject are produced as results. Likewise, in the second case results show only messages that match both the specified sender and the given word or phrase.

Messages are indexed after they have been sent or received. All folders are covered when searches are made. However, if a delegate user is searching for messages in another user’s mailbox, the delegate will not be given results in any folders that the original user has defined as private folders. Messages will be found also in the Wastebasket until it is purged.

The new message search is a fast and efficient way to find messages located anywhere in your online mailbox.