Office 365 Email Power Search

February 12, 2016

Locating old emails is something that has baffled people for a long time. We’ve seen users do the email “organizing” thing of dragging messages into some jaw-dropping set of folders. Maybe you’re one of those people. If so, welcome: maybe we can show you an alternative.

The beautiful thing about accessing mail through your browser in services like Office 365 and Google Apps is that you get to leverage the power of their servers. Rather than ask your underpowered little laptop to go fetch all the emails matching “budget”, execute that search on someone else’s hardware and watch how fast the results come in. Combine that concept with some advanced searching and you’ll be amazed at how fast you find what you’re after.

Advanced Query Search

Often when doing basic email searches you arrive at one of two roadblocks:
1. Zero search results
2. Way too many search results

The latter, too many results, is something we can help with by way of something called Keyword Criteria and Logical Operators

Sound scary? Bear with us; it’s not too bad.

Keyword Criteria

Keyword criteria is a way to filter and apply more specificity to your search. You type these right into the search field and mix and match to your heart’s content. Here’s some of the more useful keyword criteria:

Keyword	Description	Example
`From:`	Names or email addresses in the Sent field	`from:joe`
`To:`	Names or email addresses in the To field	`to:jane@company.org`
`Cc:`	Names or email addresses in the Cc field	`cc:george` or `bcc:amy`
`Participants:`	Names or email addresses in any of the above fields	`participants:amy`
`Subject:`	Specific words in the subject field	`subject:budget`
`Sent:`	Date message was sent	`sent:11/1/2014`
`Received:`	Date message was received	`received:last week`
`Has:`	Message has an attachment	`has:attachment`
`Attachment:`	Specific words in the attachment’s file name	`attachment:pdf`

Ok, we’re almost ready for some real examples. One more thing:

Logical Operators and Advanced Criteria

Logical operators are additional things that can be typed into the search field to specify, even further, what you’re after. Here are the ones you might want to familiarize yourself with:

Operator	Description	Example
`AND`	Message must meet both criteria	`from:amy AND subject:budget`
`NOT`	Message must not meet following criteria	`from:amy NOT subject:party`
`OR`	Message may meet either criteria	`from:amy OR to:joe`
`<`	Message must meet a value less than the criteria	`received:<2/13/2015`
`>`	Message must meet a value greater than the criteria	`received:>2014`

Advanced Query Search Examples

Ok, here we go with some real examples and what happens.

Full Search	Result
`from:amy`	Finds all emails sent from people whose first or last name is Amy, first or last name contains Amy (e.g., Janice Amylia, Camyla Jackson), or has amy in their email address (e.g., janice.amylia@company.com)
`subject:party`	Finds all emails sent or received containing the word “party” in the subject line
`received:last month`	Finds all emails you received last month
`sent:1/1/2016`	Finds all emails you sent on New Years Day

Combination Examples

Full Search	Result
`from:amy received:last month`	Finds all emails sent last month from people whose first or last name is Amy, first of last name contains Amy, or has Amy in their email address
`subject:party sent:1/1/2016`	Finds all emails sent or received on New Years Day, 2016 containing the word “party” in the subject line

Quick Note: Keywords and search criteria are not case sensitive. A search of party returns the same results as Party.

Venture Forth

For good or bad, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible. The more comfortable you get with criteria, operators, and combinations, the faster you’ll get.

Here’s a couple more resources.

Bookmark this guide or post some better examples below!