Searching for Old Emails in Mail Inbox

[soonadog]

I am a former PC user, and when I want to find an old email from a certain sender, I would go to the inbox, highlight "From" so that they are listed alphabetically by sender, then begin typing the sender's name and it finds them.

In Mail, when I highlight "From," then type a letter, it goes to the first letters of the "Subject" column rather than the Sender. The more I mess with it the more it does inexplicable things - like going to the Sender but I don't know why.

And don't tell me to use the magnifying glass search thing - then it finds all kinds of random emails that have the letters in the body or whatever.

Thanks for the help.

 

[-tWv-]

There is a search bar in the mail app. Why not just type the senders name into that and see if it finds it?

 

[soonadog]

Because that also searches the subject lines, the body of the messages, the other mail recipients, etc etc, ending up with tons of extraneous emails.

And I often want to go to all of the emails from that sender, and see them in chronological order - with the search bar results you have to weed through all the other crap it finds, and then you only have one from your sender.

So my question is partly how can I do this simple task, but also what the hell is it doing as I describe in my original post?

 

[-tWv-]

Hmm.. I know it lets you search by sender in the iOS mail app, but I don't use the apple mail for my email on my mac. I use an app called Sparrow which you have to pay for. This has a similar search function to the iOS app that allows you to choose if you want to search the "From, To, Subject, or All."

If you want a really simple mail app that has a lot of great features then I would recommend taking a look. Its 9.99$

Unfortunately I can't provide much help with apple's mail app. Anyone else?

 

[Mal]

Easy way (works in Lion, not sure if previous versions were the same): type "from:[sender]". You don't need the brackets, I was just indicating where you would insert the name or email address of the person you were looking for. When you do that, it also gives you a little drop-down you could use to change to searching for messages to or containing the search phrase.

jW

 

[soonadog]

Thanks - that works. I don't know why everything Apple is more complicated and/or there are obscure ways of doing things that aren't immediately apparent.

It's also funny that Mac supporters are quick to dismiss Mail, and iPhoto, and iCal, and Safari etc as lousy and they have to acquire other applications to do those tasks.

Oh well, the iMac is a nice design!

 

[Mal]

Trust me, not all Mac users dismiss those apps. I use all except Safari, which I did use exclusively for a long time and still prefer in feel, although Chrome is working better for me now. I love Mail, iCal, and iPhoto, in particular.

jW