How to Search Mail in FastMail

FastMail features a friendly field for finding fast friends' fantasies and facts, just like formal messages, newsletters and anything else that came via email. You can employ a familiar keyboard shortcut to enter your search terms, and smart operators let you search more precisely.

Search Mail in FastMail

To search for messages in FastMail:

• Press /.
• Type words to search for in email text as well as the Subject and From: and To: fields across all folders.
  • FastMail will look only for entire words. You can use "*" as a wild-card character at the end but not at the beginning to search for word fragments.
    "hazel*" will find both "hazel", "hazelwood" and "hazelnut", for example; "*haze*" will return neither result.
    See below for using the substr: operator to search parts of words in certain header fields.
• Press Enter.
• To find messages only in a certain folder:
  • Select the folder under Searching.
  • Make sure it is checked (in lieu of All mail).
    • Select All mail to return to searching all folders (excluding Spam and Trash; see below for using the in: operator to include these folders in global search).

To search with more precision, use the following operators:

• "subject:" - Search the Subject: field
• "from:" - Search the From: field
• "to:" - Search the To: field
• "body:" - Search message contents

• "FLAGGED" - Find flagged messages
• "NOT FLAGGED" - Find messages that are not flagged
• "READ" - Find messages marked read
• "NOT READ" - Find unread messages
• "SELECTED" - Find checked messages
• "NOT SELECTED" - Find messages that are not checked
• "REPLIED" - Find answered messages
• "UNREPLIED" - Find unanswered messages
• "HASATT" - Find messages with attachments
• "NOATT" - Find messages with no attachments
• "DRAFT" - Find drafts

• "in:" - Finds messages in a particular folder
• "in:*" - Finds messages in all folders (including the Trash and Spam folders excluded from All mail search)

• "date:" - Find messages sent or received on a specific day
• "before:" - Find messages sent or received before a date
• "after:" - Find messages sent or received after a certain day

• "smaller:" - Find messages smaller than a certain size
• "bigger:" - Find messages exceeding a certain size
  • Give message sizes in bytes, using the optional suffixes "k" for KB, "m" for MB and "g" for GB. 'bigger:500m' finds all messages larger than 500 MB, for example.

• "substr:" - Search "From:", "To:" and "Subject:" fields for the string of characters (also as part of a word)
• "header:" - Search in a particular message header
  • 'header:"X-Mailer: Eudora"' (including the inner quotation marks) finds all messages with the "X-Mailer:" header set to "Eudora", for example.
• "msgid:" - Find messages referencing a particular Message-Id
  • This typically includes the original message as well as replies.
• "imap:" - Enter an IMAP SEARCH command directly

You can combine search terms with "AND" and "OR", negate them with "NOT" and group using parentheses "(" and ")".

'(HASATT AND before:"last week") OR (subject:"Gaberone" OR NOT before:"last week")', for example, finds messages from before last week with attachments, messages with "Gaberone" in the Subject: line and messages sent and arrived during the last seven days.

Dates FastMail Understands

You can specify dates when searching in any of the following formats:

• All common date notations, such as "1967-12-24", "12/24/1967" and "12-25 / 1967"
• "today"
• "yesterday"
• Years, months, weeks or days "ago", such as "4 months ago"
• "last" week, weekday, month or year, such as "last week", "last Thursday" or "last year"
• "first", "last" or counted weekday in month, such as "3rd Saturday in Dec 1967" or "first Sun in January"

(Updated April 2013)

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