Improved default search behaviour in classic interface

When we introduced the current interface, one of the features we were really happy with was our vastly improved searching. Basically we implemented a full text index that allowed you to search the headers and content of all your email in all folders for any words in a few seconds (in IMAP parlance, this uses the FUZZY SEARCH extension)

At the time, we decided to leave the search on the classic interface as it was (by default, search from/to/cc/subject headers but not the message content and search on substrings rather than whole terms).

However the general consensus from classic users is that they’d really like the improved search that the current interface comes with. So today we’ve rolled out a change that better unifies the search syntax on both the classic and current interfaces.

So now on both interfaces if you do a search:

dinner john

It will do a fast indexed search of the from, to, cc, bcc and subject headers as well as the message body content for messages that contain both “dinner” and “john”. This search is done on words/terms with stemming where possible, not sub-strings. This searches the current folder by default on classic, and across all folders by default on the current interface. On classic, you can check the “All” checkbox to search across all folders.

If you want to revert to the historical sub-string searching of headers, you can use the substr: modifier. Some more examples:

• example – fuzzy search from/to/cc/bcc/subject headers and message
  bodies for the word “example”
• body:example – fuzzy search message bodies for the word “example”
• to:example – fuzzy search to/cc/bcc headers for the word “example”
• onlycc:example – fuzzy search cc header for the word “example”
• substr:example – search from/to/cc/subject headers (but not body
  content) for the substring “example”
• substr:(dinner john) – search from/to/cc/subject headers for both
  substrings “dinner” and “john”
• substr:(body:example) – search message body content for the
  substring “example” (warning: likely very slow!)
• substr:(to:example) -  search to/cc/bcc headers for the substring
  “example”
• substr:(onlycc:example) -  search cc header for the substring
  “example”

A complete list of all the search options can be found on our mailbox searching help page.