Basic Search

Using the Search Bar

The search bar is the fastest way to find archived emails in Easy Mail Archive. Located at the top of the Search page, it allows you to enter keywords and instantly search across all messages you have access to. Simply type one or more words and press Enter or click the search button to see matching results.

Easy Mail Archive uses PostgreSQL full-text search to index the contents of every archived email. This means your search terms are matched against the subject line, message body, sender and recipient addresses, and attachment file names. Results are ranked by relevance, so the most relevant messages appear first.

How Full-Text Search Works

When an email is archived, its content is automatically processed and indexed. The search engine understands word variations - for example, searching for "invoice" will also match "invoices." Common words like "the," "and," or "is" (known as stop words) are ignored to keep results focused on meaningful terms.

To search for a specific phrase, wrap your keywords in double quotes. For example, searching for "quarterly report" will only return messages that contain those two words together in that exact order, rather than messages that happen to contain "quarterly" and "report" separately.

Understanding Search Results

Search results are displayed in a list showing the sender, recipients, subject line, date, and a brief snippet of the matching content. Each result row also indicates whether the message has attachments. You can click on any result to open and read the full message.

By default, results are sorted by relevance. You can adjust the sort order to show the newest or oldest messages first using the sort controls above the results list. The total number of matching messages is displayed at the top so you know how many results your query returned.

Tips for Effective Basic Searches

If your initial search returns too many results, try adding more specific keywords to narrow things down. For example, instead of searching for "meeting," try "meeting agenda March" to focus on a particular topic. If you are not finding what you expect, double-check your spelling or try alternative words that the sender might have used. You can also combine the basic search with advanced filters like date ranges or sender addresses to further refine your results.