Search message body?

[cathy1099]

In the new interface, is there a way to search the body of a message? Where is it?

I can't find "advanced search" or any way to search the body of a message. The default search appears to look only at subject lines and the "from" field. Unhelpfully, there is no documentation for the new interface. I ended up changing back to the old interface just to find a message.

[johanborg]

Originally Posted by cathy1099

In the new interface, is there a way to search the body of a message? Where is it?

I can't find "advanced search" or any way to search the body of a message. The default search appears to look only at subject lines and the "from" field. Unhelpfully, there is no documentation for the new interface. I ended up changing back to the old interface just to find a message.

Right. We have a brand new and faster search backend coming soonish as well, but for now you can use the keyword "BODY:" before your search terms. It works in both interfaces, by the way, quite handy even in Classic.

[cathy1099]

OK, thanks for your quick reply.

[sslund]

Originally Posted by johanborg

Right. We have a brand new and faster search backend coming soonish as well, but for now you can use the keyword "BODY:" before your search terms. It works in both interfaces, by the way, quite handy even in Classic.

Can someone please clarify the required syntax because the above isn't working for me?

Does BODY need to be capitalized? Does the search string need to be included in quotes? One space, two spaces, or no spaces after the colon? Does the term one is searching for need to be capitalized?

I think I've tried all the combos I can think of yet can't search message bodies as above, so I'm thinking I'm getting the syntax wrong.

TIA,
Saundra

[brong]

lower body, search string in quotes, like this

body:"some stuff"

If you know anything else about the message, add that filter too

body:"some stuff" since:2012-08-01

will run a lot faster, because it will avoid doing the body scan if it can't match the cheaper searches

[JeffK]

I have tested the following in the new interface and it appears to be working. To search for the string abcde in the body of my emails i typed body:abcde in the search box.

Jeff

[sslund]

Originally Posted by brong

lower body, search string in quotes, like this

body:"some stuff"

If you know anything else about the message, add that filter too

body:"some stuff" since:2012-08-01

will run a lot faster, because it will avoid doing the body scan if it can't match the cheaper searches

Many thanks -- that worked for me! What I was failing to do was put the word/phrase I was searching for in quotes.

LOL -- don't you love it when a problem is a user error that's very simple to explain? And greatly appreciated!

[JeffK]

That's a bit odd - body:abcde worked for me. I guess body:some stuff (with a space between some and stuff) may not have worked.

[sslund]

Originally Posted by JeffK

That's a bit odd - body:abcde worked for me. I guess body:some stuff (with a space between some and stuff) may not have worked.

Jeff, I just tried your way as typed below:
body:subscribed to
And, that worked for me as well, even with the space between subscribed and to.

"This stuff" isn't intuitive to me, but I'm pretty good, albeit literal, at following directions, hence my problem above.

It's interesting -- and helpful -- for me to learn different ways to accomplish the same thing, so I appreciate your response and seeing how another way can work as well! Seeing that kind of stuff helps me to put things in a bigger-for-me (although still rudimentary for many folks) "how things work" contextual picture.

Saundra

[brong]

the

body:subscribed to

probably worked because "to" matched part of from/to/cc/bcc headers, while body matched subscribed

[JeffK]

I've confirmed the quotes are required if there is a space. body:ensure that actually returned an incorrect result while body:"ensure that" appears to have worked correctly.

[sslund]

Originally Posted by brong

the

body:subscribed to

probably worked because "to" matched part of from/to/cc/bcc headers, while body matched subscribed

Ah- ha . . . yes, I think that's right. I've been playing and when what comes after the space matches something in the header, then there's a hit. For instance, I tried searching for bodyhone bank, and the known message I was searching for wasn't found, but other messages that had "phone" in the body and "bank" in the header were found.

Whereas searching for:
body:"phone bank"
worked as expected.

Thanks for the clarification & explanation!

[lane]

You can use other stuff in the search field too. For example, to find all messages sent using the Thunderbird desktop client, try putting the following in the search field:

header:"User-agent: Thunderbird"