

With the quotation marks, only a phrase such as Mr. Green put on his red shirt after dark would match. Without the quotation marks, Mail matches messages containing all three of those words, anywhere in the message, so, for example, Mr. To search for an exact sequence of words, such as dark green shirt, put quotation marks around the phrase: "dark green shirt". Save: Click this button, which sits at the far right of the Favorites bar, to Create a Smart Mailbox (discussed below).Selected Mailboxes: If you had more than one mailbox selected, click this to search all (and only) those mailboxes.You can also select any mailbox or smart mailbox already on the Favorites bar. Click it to restrict the search to that mailbox. Mailbox Name: If you had a single mailbox selected when you started searching, that mailbox’s name appears in the Favorites bar.All: Click this item, and Mail searches messages in all mailboxes (including Sent and Drafts) for the text you entered.The options you can select are as follows: Similarly, when the search token is a subject word, you can restrict the search to just message subjects. For example, when searching for a person, you can narrow the search to messages from that person, to that person, or where the person’s name is mentioned anywhere in the message-just click the little arrow on the left side of the token and choose the desired context from the pop-up menu that appears. When I say a token is “adjustable,” I mean you can change the context of where Mail searches for the term. Different tokens offer different choices of context. Tokens are great because they make searching less error-prone and easier to manipulate. That bubble is a search token-a unit that functions as a special, adjustable search term. Select one of those items (for example, a sender’s name) and Mail encapsulates the item in a little gray bubble.
Search for an email in mac full#
If Mail notices that whatever you’ve typed is part of a name, email address, date, subject, or other message header, it may display the corresponding full item in the list. If you ignore the list of suggestions, or select the default choice at the top (“Message contains:”), Mail simply searches entire messages (including headers and metadata) for that literal text. If you see what you’re looking for in the list, you can save yourself a bit of typing by simply selecting it, either by clicking it or by using the arrow keys to highlight the item and then pressing Return.Ĭhoose a person’s name from the People category of the suggestion list and a search token appears with that person’s name. Use Suggestions and Tokens As you type your search term, the Search field displays a drop-down list of suggestions-not of matching messages, but of text or other elements Mail thinks you might be looking for. To hide the results and return to the message list, click the X icon in the Search box. (To jump right to the Search field, press Command-Option-F.) Mail begins displaying results in the message list immediately-sometimes even before you finish typing. Then start typing your query in the Search field in Mail’s toolbar. To find an email message, begin by (optionally) selecting one or more mailboxes in the Mail’s sidebar to restrict your search to those mailboxes. Select “Message contains” (as shown here), and Mail searches message contents for whatever is in the Search field. As you type a search term, suggested queries appear in a list.
