Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Use Boolean Expressions
A Boolean search is one that uses the logical operators AND, OR, and NOT, along with op-
tional parentheses, to help narrow the results in different ways (for example, messages con-
taining either “Jack”
or
“Jill,” both “Jack”
and
“Jill,” or “Jack” but
not
“Jill”). Mail can per-
form Boolean searches—but only in message contents, not in headers (such as Subject, From,
or Date).
When using Boolean operators, always use uppercase
AND
,
OR
, and
NOT
(so Mail doesn't
search for the word “and,” for example). You can use a minus sign (
-
) as a shortcut for
AND
NOT
—so, if you type
Jack -Jill
in the Search field, you'll see a list of all the messages that
contain “Jack” but
not
“Jill.”
Tip:
To learn more about Spotlight searching generally—including tokens and Boolean
expressions—read Sharon Zardetto's
Take Control of Spotlight for Finding Anything on
Search by Date Range
To search for messages in a range of dates, enter the dates in the form of
M/D/Y-M/D/Y
—for
example,
12/26/11-4/15/12
. (Don't expect tokens to appear, however—those happen
only for common units such as a whole month.) You can, of course, combine dates with
other text—for example,
3/1/2012-4/11/2012 backups
finds messages dated between
3/1/2012 and 4/11/2012 containing the word “backups.”
MailTags
For even greater searchability, try
MailTags
, a plug-in that adds Spotlight-searchable
metadata
to
your
email
messages,
such
as
comments,
categories,
and
due
dates—either manually or using a rule.
You can search that data using Spotlight or make it part of a smart mailbox. MailTags
even stores this metadata on IMAP servers so that you can access the same metadata
from multiple computers.
Search within the Current Message
If you want to find text
within
a selected message or conversation (as opposed to finding
messages themselves), you can choose Edit > Find > Find (Command-F) to display an inline
search field just above the message contents. As you type in this field, Mail instantly high-
