Searching for Mail Messages

When you select this, the Search Mail dialog box is displayed showing the Simple page.

The Simple page lets you choose which fields to search and what text to search for. You may choose any of the following field options:

Field Option	Description
Subject field only	Searches the subject field of the message.
Subject field and message body	Searches the subject field and the message body.
All text fields	Searches all fields, including subject, body, sender and category fields.
All fields	Searches all fields, including subject, body, sender, received date, sent date and category fields.

Select the required field option from the Field drop down list. Enter the text that you wish to search for into the Text field. Choose which mail folders to search. You may select either the Sent and received radio button, the Received only radio button or the Sent only radio button. If you wish to search through bulletin boards, check the Search Bulletin Boards check box. If you want to confine your search to a certain date range then check the Date check box and select the relevant date range from the Start and End date controls.

When you have specified your search criteria, press the Search button. OfficeTalk will perform the search and add the results into the Results window as they are found.

To view a particular result, select the result from the Results window and press the Goto button. OfficeTalk will close the dialog box, load the mail message and display it in the Read Mail window.

If you wish to perform a more complex search then you may use the Advanced tab of the Search dialog box. The Advanced page lets you build a complex search expression from a series of simple search expressions using the logical AND and logical OR operators. Additionally, the Advanced page lets you include any of the fields available in the Mail window as part of your search.

For example, you may wish to search for all mail messages whose sender address contains the characters john@address.com and whose received time is after 1/1/98 or for all messages that are urgent.

You may achieve this in the following way:

From the Advanced page of the Search Mail dialog box, press the Add… button. This will show the Expression dialog box. Select 'Sender' from the Field field, select 'Contains No Case' from the Operator drop down and enter 'john@address.com' into the Value field. Press OK. The full expression will appear as a single line in the Expressions list in the Advanced page.

Select the AND radio button and press the Add… button again. From the Expression dialog box, select 'Received Date' from the Field field, select '>=' from the Operator drop down and select '1/1/98' from the Value field. You can select the date either by typing in a date value or by pressing the {bmct help0146.bmp} button and selecting the date from the pop-up calendar. Press OK. The expression will also appear in the Expressions list in the Advanced page.

Next, combine the two expression into a single line by selecting all lines in the Expression list and pressing the Combine button.

Next, select the OR radio button and press the Add… button once again. From the Expression dialog box, select 'Is Urgent' from the Field field, select '==' from the Operator drop down and select 'TRUE' from the Value field. Press OK. The full expression will appear as shown below:

Perform the search by pressing the Search button.