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Old 3 Nov 2020, 10:26 AM   #1
n5bb
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Irving, Texas
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Arrow Attachment search in beta

The Fastmail beta currently has a very useful new feature. Searches now by default include the title and content of attachments, in addition to certain headers and the message body. I have tried this with PowerPoint, Word, spreadsheet, and other common attachment types and it reliably finds matching messages. More details:
  • Searches of the following form find messages containing both alpha AND beta:
    alpha beta
    That search finds messages containing "alpha" and "beta" in any location, so it finds "beta is a new alpha".
  • Searches of the following form find messages containing either alpha OR beta (note that OR must be capitalized):
    alpha OR beta
    That search finds messages containing either "alpha" or "beta" in any location, so it finds "alpha" by itself.
  • Searches of the following forms find messages containing the exact string "alpha beta"
    "alpha beta"
    'alpha beta'

    That search finds messages containing "alpha beta", but it will not find "alpha is beta".
  • Searches ignore case, so "alpha beta" will find "Alpha Beta" or "alphA BETA".
  • These searches also work in the iOS beta app. A previous bug which ignored the default iOS curvy quote has been corrected.
  • You can log into beta at: https://beta.fastmail.com
  • On an iOS device:
    • Be sure you have updated to the latest Fastmail app in the App Store. For me, the last update happened around October 19, 2020.
    • Then open the Fastmail app and go to Settings>Device Settings>Show Advanced Settings. You will have a choice of using the Beta or Production (normal) backend.
In addition to Mail search, you can also search your Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and filenames in Files.

Bill
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Old 4 Nov 2020, 04:20 PM   #2
BritTim
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Did you happen to see if packed files (such as zip) were supported? The lack of such support has often been a problem for me in other search domains.
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Old 5 Nov 2020, 02:34 AM   #3
n5bb
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Arrow Search matches the contents of basic zip files

Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
Did you happen to see if packed files (such as zip) were supported? The lack of such support has often been a problem for me in other search domains.
Yes, in general it seems that zip files without passwords are searched. Here is what I found testing a zip of 7 PDF files:
  • A search discovers the filenames contained in the zip.
  • A search discovers text contained in a PDF file contained in the zip.
  • When searching a PDF file (even one contained within a zip file), multiple spaces and newlines are ignored so that each token (separated by spaces, commas, or other delimiters) is compared.
So if the PDF file contained:
Code:
usually, a dog
barks
using a search string with embedded spaces and commas such as the following matches, ignoring the spaces, commas, and newline in the document text:
Code:
usually a         dog, barks
This is true even if a search is enclosed within quotes. This means that the search matches a string of tokens, both contained within the search string and the document, while ignoring delimiters such as spaces, commas, and newlines. So it's not an exact match search, but a search for matching token content. I think this is a good choice, since you usually won't know in advance if the search text is split with a newline.

Bill
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Old 6 Nov 2020, 01:41 AM   #4
petergh
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This is fantastic news.

I just sent a zip file to myself containing a large, zipped PDF document, and I can confirm that it is indeed possible to search for terms contained in the PDF file.

Even better, search terms can also contain non-ASCII characters, so I can successfully find words like "vilkår", "dødsfald", and "værdi".

This feature is extremely useful to me!
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Old 6 Nov 2020, 08:05 AM   #5
gardenweed
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This is a pretty nice feature.
Looks like it searches Excel too.

I like that it shows the attachment where it found the search word and gives a little snippet.
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Old 6 Nov 2020, 09:54 AM   #6
n5bb
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gardenweed View Post
...I like that it shows the attachment where it found the search word and gives a little snippet.
I have three Fastmail accounts.
  • The attachment search feature has now appeared in production (normal login) accounts. Beta is no longer required.
  • There are a few strange delimiter issues, and I'm going to send feedback to Fastmail about these. For example, if a phone number in a document is "999.222.4444", you can not match this using a search string of "999-222-4444". However, you can match "wall-wart" with "wall.wart". The treatment of the comma, period (full-stop), and underscore seem to be different when used with numerals compared to alpha terms.
Bill

Last edited by n5bb : 15 Nov 2020 at 06:31 AM. Reason: Discovered that you must use Sort>Preview>"Show message previews" to view the attachment and snippett.
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Old 6 Nov 2020, 06:40 PM   #7
BritTim
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There are bound to be some edge cases that (at least initially) do not work exactly as everyone would like. Overall, though, I am impressed. This kind of search capability is not easy to implement.
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Old 14 Nov 2020, 11:25 PM   #8
earlybird
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
There are bound to be some edge cases that (at least initially) do not work exactly as everyone would like. Overall, though, I am impressed. This kind of search capability is not easy to implement.
This should warrant a blog post, it's a big feature. They are even getting Chinese/Japanese PDF search correct (OK, I've only tried UTF-8). Very useful.
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Old 17 Nov 2020, 12:13 AM   #9
sflorack
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Interesting that searching the contents of files isn't supported in the Files section (only messages).
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Old 18 Nov 2020, 04:37 PM   #10
JeremyNicoll
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sflorack View Post
Interesting that searching the contents of files isn't supported in the Files section (only messages).
But files only arrive in the files section if you put them there, so probably Fastmail expect you to have a your own searchable backup copies elsewhere.

Emails on the other hand arrive all the time from whoever sent them, and you probably don't have copies of your own.
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Old 18 Nov 2020, 10:42 PM   #11
sflorack
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll View Post
But files only arrive in the files section if you put them there, so probably Fastmail expect you to have a your own searchable backup copies elsewhere.

Emails on the other hand arrive all the time from whoever sent them, and you probably don't have copies of your own.
I disagree that the ability to search for a file should be tied to it's origination. Whether I put it there or someone else did, I should be able to search for it.
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Old 19 Nov 2020, 08:20 AM   #12
earlybird
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sflorack View Post
Interesting that searching the contents of files isn't supported in the Files section (only messages).
It might have something to do with how the Files feature is wired. Email storage is probably in Cyrus somewhere and well optimized and scalable. Files also has WebDAV support, and I imagine the storage is likely nowhere near as optimized as email storage, for example in terms of supported I/O bandwidth. You can't just crawl terabytes of data on slow(er, and therefore lower cost) storage without side effects.

Even if they would offer that kind of feature, they could still be waiting for the first indexing to complete…
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