Fortunately, searching inside messages is just as easy in Mac OS X Mail as finding the messages themselves — also if you have come across an email by mere chance, of course.
Search Inside a Message with Mac OS X Mail
To find text in an email with Mac OS X Mail:
- Open the message, either in the Mac OS X Mail preview pane or in its own window.
- Press Command-F.
- You can also select Edit | Find | Find… from the menu.
- Start typing the word or phrase for which you are looking.
- Change search options, if needed, to suit your needs:
- Click the magnifying glass that appears at the search field's start.
- Make sure Ignore Case is not checked to match your search term's case in results.
- Make sure Wrap Around is checked to start searching again from the email's top if OS X Mail looks for more instances after the last one in the email.
- Make sure Contains is selected to find characters and word parts inside words.
- Make sure Starts With is selected to return only words that start with the first letter in your search.
- Click Done (or press Esc) to hide the search bar. (You can still find the next and previous instances using keyboard shortcuts—see below—, and if you bring up the inline search bar again, it will be pre-filled with your latest search term.)
To advance to a search term's next instance in an email:
- Press Command-G.
- You can also select Edit | Find | Find Next from the menu.
- The number of instances found is listed to the right of the search box.
- Following the last instance, search will wrap around (unless you have changed search options; see above) and start again with the first.
To jump to a previous instance of your search term in an email:
- Press Command-Shift-G.
- You can also, of course, select Edit | Find | Find Previous from the menu.
Find Other Instances of Selected Text
To quickly search for other places where part of a message's text occurs in the same messages:
- Highlight the word, word part or letters you want to search.
- Press Command-E.
- You can also select Edit | Find | Use Selection for Find from the Mac OS X Mail menu.
- To jump to the next instance:
- Press Command-G.
- To go to the previous instance:
- Press Command-Shift-G.
- To edit the search text:
- Press Command-F.
- Edit the text that has been entered into the search field.
(Updated August 2012)
