Understanding Basic and Advanced Search

Last updated on 2018-07-09 12:55:03

This article refers to Barracuda Message Archiver Legacy Release firmware or higher .

Search Fields by Search Criteria

Table 1 describes the fields that are expanded/searched for based on the selected search criteria type.

Table 1. Search Fields.

Search Criteria	Fields Searched	Description	Example
Entire Message	subject body attachment to cc bcc from envelope sender email address username portion of email address domain portion of email address envelope recipients email address username portion of email address domain portion of email address	Search terms are divided on rough word boundaries.	Searching for test phrase yields the following: (subject:test OR body:test OR attachment:test OR to:test ... ) AND (subject:phrase OR body:phrase OR attachment:phrase OR to:phrase ... )
Entire Message (Phrase)	subject body attachment to cc bcc from envelope sender email address username portion of email address domain portion of email address envelope recipients email address username portion of email address domain portion of email address	Search terms are treated as a single unit.	Searching for test phrase yields the following: (subject:"test phrase" OR body:"test phrase" OR attachment:"test phrase" OR to:"test phrase" ... )
Subject/Body	subject body attachment	Query is treated as a phrase.	Searching for test phrase yields the following: (subject:"test phrase" OR body:"test phrase" OR attachment:"test phrase")
Body	body attachment	Query is treated as a phrase.	Searching for test phrase yields the following: (body:"test phrase" OR attachment:"test phrase")

Punctuation

Punctuation is treated as white space in search strings with the following exceptions:

Email addresses and Internet hostnames – Treated as single searchable tokens.
Example: user1@mycompany.com is treated as a single searchable token.
Period (.) – When not followed by whitespace, a period is treated as part of a word.
Example: 1.2 is treated as a single searchable token.
Hyphen (-) – When a token containing a hyphen also contains a number, the complete item is treated as a part of the number.
Examples:
MD-1800 is considered a searchable word, including the hyphen.
hyphen-madness is treated as two words ("hyphen" "madness") with the hyphen treated as whitespace.

Search Modes

The BASIC > Search page offers two search modes, Basic and Advanced:

Basic Search – Run a search based on a word or phrase across all messages accessible by your account
Advanced Search – Run a complex search query based on multiple criteria; note that you can save queries for future use

To switch between the modes, click Basic and Advanced to the right of the search criteria area.

When you initially go to the BASIC > Search page, all messages accessible by your account display in the message list in the Standard tab. Both modes are available to all users who have the ability to search through messages, but only the Advanced Search page offers the ability to perform complex queries and create a Saved Search.

New messages received on the Barracuda Message Archiver may not appear in search results for up to 30 minutes because messages are archived and indexed as they are received. If an immediate search is needed across new messages, go to the BASIC > Administration page, and click Reload in the System Reload/Shutdown section.

Basic Search

Use the Basic Search mode to perform a quick search across all messages. The Basic Search interface accepts a word or phrase on which to search, and returns all available messages that contain the specified text in either the header or message body. This mode is useful when searching for that handful of emails to or from someone on a specific topic, or when looking for any message that contains a particular phrase. These are one-time searches as these cannot be saved for later use.

All search terms for Basic Search must be in one of the following formats: Text-based, Multi-Text, Wildcards , or Domain-based.

Advanced Search

Use the Advanced Search mode to perform complex search queries based on selected attributes.

When including both AND and OR search terms in a query, the order in which these terms are placed is important. For example,

Add the first term "A", and then add term "and B"; the query searches as: (A AND B)
Add a term "or C"; the query searches as: ((A AND B) OR C)
Add a term "and D"; the query searches as: (((A AND B) OR C) AND D)

This affects preparation and ordering of Advanced Search queries as follows:

Typically, you will want to first build a population of results by using "OR" , and then subtract items from that population by using "AND". For example,

TermA OR
TermB OR
TermC AND
TermD

If you wish to force a different order of operations by placing parentheses yourself, use the Keyword Expressions search mode and construct your query according to those guidelines.

Use the following options to build and save search queries:

To add additional search parameters – Click the plus sign (+) to the left of a search criteria line.
To remove a search parameter – Click the minus sign (-) to the left of the search parameter you want to remove.
To AND or OR search parameters – Once you have more than one search criteria line, the AND button displays at the end of each search parameter signifies that it will be logically ANDed to the next specified parameter. If your next criteria is to be logically ORed, click AND to toggle it to OR and vise versa.
To save a search query – Click Save Search below the search criteria; the Save Search box displays:
Enter the name under which the query is to be saved, and then click OK. If you enter a name that already exists, the new search parameters replace the previous search criteria.
To run a previously-saved search – Click the Saved Searches tab, and click Search in the Actions column following the Saved Search you want to run.

To receive an alert via email when a message that fits the parameters of a Saved Search is received by the Barracuda Message Archiver, Policy Alerts are required.