Message Search

soyMAIL provides a keyword search on a per-folder basis. The strings to be searched for do not require or accept any wildcards. The search finds messages that contain the supplied sequence of characters in the specified component of the message. Search strings are not case sensitive and may contain any printable character. Multiple search parameters result in progressively more constrained results.

soyMAIL also provides regular expression searching (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression). The search string should be prefixed with a caret ("^") character (not included in the pattern) to indicate regex rather than keyword search.

Searching is very expensive in terms of CPU and disk activity. Some or all search facilities may be disabled by the soyMAIL administrator. If unavailable the button appears as and provides a message to that effect if pressed.

Search Parameters

Date: | The date dialog defaults to messages received on ANY date. Specific dates can be selected from the dialog. Messages since, before or on that date can then be searched for. The date is local to the soyMAIL server and as displayed in the folder message listing.
From: To: Cc: Subject: | These fields are the same as those displayed in the folder message listing. The address and subject fields are very efficient message selectors.
Message: | Message content must be in plain-text or have a plain-text alternative. soyMAIL does not search HTML content.
Attachment: | This field selects messages based on whether any attachment name (usually file name) contains the specified string.
Category: | This selector allows messages to be located based on a broad grouping of general characteristics. messages with Internet-style addressing with VMS-style addressing messages with one or more attachments no attachments messages containing text in HTML format messages in plain-text format The raw category changes the behaviour of the Message: string search. Instead of the message text being searched the full, raw characters of the unformatted message is searched (header and body).
Results every: | The selector for result hits allows particularly long and low-hit searches to be progressed one hit (or a small number of hits) at a time, reducing the delays before seeing progressive results.

Search Results

soyMAIL returns the results of a search in the standard folder message listing format. Listed messages may then be read or otherwise operated on in the usual way. When search parameters involve message content (text and/or attachments) the message list may have gaps in the message numbers.

Folder messages may be progressively searched using the dialog.

When reading from the page the previous and next buttons do not step over any message number gaps. Search results involving message context are best read from the listing page.

Until the or buttons are used the current search will be repeated against any new folder selected using the
dialog. In this way the same search may be applied to multiple folders without returning to the search dialog.

Search Performance

soyMAIL search operates at two levels.

- date, addresses and subject
- message content - text and attachments

The first group are very fast and efficient selectors. They do not require access to the message content itself. The second group require very much more intensive processing, particularly if MIME content is involved. For searches of folders containing many messages there can be significant latency in returning a result.