Need a quick answer on advanced search parameters
I am an IT professional, but am not a regular Thunderbird user. I have an e-discovery need to search for multiple terms in a mailbox. The best solution I have found for this is to export the mailbox from Google Apps as an .mbox, and use the importexporttools extension for Thunderbird to import the .mbox.
I then have the mails in a local folder, and right-click on the folder and click on search messages. A number of filters appear, and I put in my terms, select to search within body, for Any results.
This works fine for me but I have two questions:
1. How can I search for something with an apostrophe in it? For example, if I needed to search for: '123abc How would I do it? Quotes? Is there an escape character to state that that needs to be taken literally and isn't a quote or part of a command?
2. Does the search I am performing, or any other way of searching, search within attachments? In Google Apps I can search within attachments - such as text files, or Microsoft Office documents. Is this possible to do?
I searched through the help files and FAQs, but I am not sure if I am using quick filter, or global search etc.
Thanks!
All Replies (1)
There are different methods of searching.
Quick Filter: The Quick Filter can be used to search in the selected folder. There are additional filters to refine the search.
Global Search: The Global Search can be used to search all accounts. There are additional filters to refine the search.
Account and folder specific Search: 'Edit' > 'Find' > 'Search Messages' or 'Menu Icon' > 'Find' > 'Search Messages'
A new window opens. At the top you will see: 'Search for messages in' and you can select the mail account or specific folder from the drop down selection. You can choose to 'Search subfolders' if required.
If you are using one search criteria (condition) or more than one but they all must be true, then select 'Match all of the following' option If you are using more than one condition, but any, not necessarily all, can be true, then use 'Match any of the following'.
example test: Using Account and folder specific Search method. I set it to search a particular folder. selected: 'Body' and 'Contains' and typed: "new click on 'Search' button It returned only one message. when I removed the quote mark so it only said: new (not "new) clicked on search and it returned several possibilites. So this worked, returning exactly as required.
When I used the 'Global Search' on same folder typing: "new It returned a search only on : new Quick filter method also failed to recognise the " used before new. So in this instance of searching on: "new neither Global Search nor Quick filter returned the best result although the message required was included in the selection returned.
The best method which worked as required was Using Account and folder specific Search method.
You can search to return any emails with attachments using 'Account and folder specific Search' method. Quick Filter and Global filter will search on whether the word 'attachments' is in the eg: Body of email, but not necessarilly locate emails with attachments.
Global search will search to include attachment filenames. Quick filter does not.
As far as I'm aware, you cannot search the contents of an attachment.