Searching Through Messages
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You can search a folder for messages to or from a particular person or
about a particular subject.
In fact, you can also search for messages containing selected strings
in any arbitrary header field or any string found within the
messages.
Use the
M-s
command.
You are first prompted for the name of the
folder to search and then placed in the following buffer
(the Figure Pick window) in
MH-Pick
mode.
Edit this template by entering your search criteria in an appropriate
header field that is already there, or create a new field yourself.
If the string you're looking for could be anywhere in a message, then
place the string underneath the row of dashes.
The
M-s
command uses the MH command
pick(1)
to do the real work, so read the Section
Finding Messages with pick to find out more
about how to enter the criteria.
There are no semantics associated with the search criteria -- they are simply
treated as strings.
Case is ignored when all lowercase is used, and regular expressions (a la
ed(1))
are available.
It is all right to specify several search criteria.
What happens then is that a logical
and
of the various fields is performed.
If you prefer a logical
or
operation, run
M-s
multiple times.
Figure: Pick window
As an example, let's say that we want to find messages from Ginnean
about horseback riding in the Kosciusko National Park (Australia)
during January 16-22, 1994.
Normally we would start with a broad search and narrow it down if
necessary to produce a manageable amount of data, but we'll cut to the
chase and create a fairly restrictive set of criteria as follows:
From: ginnean
To:
Cc:
Date: Jan 1994
Subject: horse.*kosciusko
--------
As with
MH-Letter
mode,
MH-Pick
provides commands like
C-c C-f C-t
to help you fill in the blanks.
Command | Description
___________|_______________________________
C-c C-f C-t| Move to To: header field
C-c C-f C-c| Move to cc: header field
C-c C-f C-s| Move to Subject: header field
C-c C-f C-r| Move to From: header field
C-c C-f C-b| Move to Bcc: header field
C-c C-f C-f| Move to Fcc: header field
C-c C-f C-d| Move to Dcc: header field
C-c C-c | Execute the search
___________|_______________________________
To perform the search, type
C-c C-c.
The selected messages are placed in the
search
sequence, which you can use later in forwarding (Forwarding Mail), printing
(Printing Your Mail), or narrowing your field of view
(Using Sequences).
Subsequent searches are appended to the
search
sequence.
If, however, you wish to start with a clean slate, first delete the
search
sequence (how to do this is discussed in the Section
Using Sequences).
If you're searching in a folder that is already displayed in a
MH-Folder
buffer, only those messages contained in the buffer are used for the
search.
Therefore, if you want to search in all messages, first kill the
folder's buffer with
C-x k
or scan the entire folder with
M-r.
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