- Before searching for messages, you must set a current account, using the "Set Acccount" button on an account info page.
- You can search for messages using any combination of the search boxes in the search form. If you supply values for two or more of the search boxes, then the search must match all of the values you supply (that is, non-empty search boxes are logically AND'ed in the search).
- All text fields are automatically automatically wild-carded at the beginning and end.
- The "Data From" field is wild-carded as follows: "2014" is interpreted as "2014-01-01", and "2014-03" is interpreted as "2014-03-01".
- The "Data To" field is wild-carded as follows: "2014" is interpreted as "2014-12-31", and "2014-03" is interpreted as "2014-03-31".
- "From", "To", and "Cc" fields will search both email addresses and email names (see Address for treatment of addresses an names).
- Text searches are case-insensitive.
- You can search on attachment names even if the attachment itself is stored externally. As a text field that is automatically wild-carded, if you supply the string ".jpg" in the "Attachment Name" field, the search will find all messages with at least one part that is an attachment having ".jpg" in the attachment name.
- If you supply a search string for the "Body Text" field, only messages with Content-Type text/plain and text/html will be searched, and only content that is stored internally will be searched.
Note that message content is stored (and therefore searched) in its original transfer encoding. Content-Type 'text/html' is usually encoded as 'quoted-printable'; this may affect your search results. In addition, if you specify a search of 'text/html' content, your search may match html tags which are not in fact visible in the rendered html. A message part with Content-Type 'text/html' is usually accompanied by a part containing the same information with Content-Type 'text/plain'. For all these reasons, you will probably prefer to restrict your search to 'text/plain'.
- If you do not supply any search string, the search will match all messages.
A message search results in a list of messages that match the search; a pop-up dialog will inform you if there are no messages matching the search.
Each row in a message list has a checkbox for selecting the message, a numeric message id that is hyperlinked to a Message Info page, the date of the message, and the subject of the message. Long message lists are paged, with pagination links appearing at the top of the page. To the left of the pagination list is pulldown that allows you to select or deselect all the messages on the current page. The selection status of a message is preserved for the duration of a login session (even if the relevant message list page is deleted), but the selection status is not retained across login sessions. You can change the selection status of a message multiple times in a login session.
There are only two functions associated with selection status:
- Selection status can be used as a criterion in a message search.
- Selection status determines which messages are determined in an export. (but note that at the point of export, you can decide whether to export all messages that ARE selected or all messages that ARE NOT selected).
A message info page has two parts:
- The top part of the page some attributes of the message, including information from these mbox header lines "Message-Id:", "Date:", "Subject:", "From:", "To:", and if present, "Cc:", "Bcc:", and "In-Reply-To:". If the message has an "In-Reply-To:" header and if the replied-to message is in the DArcMail database, then the message id of the replied-to message is hyperlinked to its message info page. If the message itself has replies, then the text "Get Replies" (or "Get Reply") is hyperlinked to a list of the replying messages.
- The bottom part of the page lists the message parts. See Message Content for information on the structure of the message content list.