Searching in Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail offers not just an emailing service, but a complete platform for you to run your business, with applications like Notes, Calendar, Tasks, Bookmarks, and Streams, tightly integrated with your mailbox. These applications ensure that you have everything you need to run your business in one place. 

But with the abundance of information and data sharing that goes on in your mailbox, keeping track of it all, finding the specific email or Streams post that you're looking for, becomes a harder task. To make this easier, Zoho Mail provides options to search not just for emails, but also the other entities such as Streams, Tasks, Notes, Calendar, Attachments, Contacts, and Bookmarks.

Searching across entities

Zoho Mail automatically chooses the search entity depending on which application you're currently using. For example, say you're using Streams, the search bar automatically changes the search entity to Streams. 

Despite this, if you want to search in a different application, you can pick where you want to search from by clicking the drop-down. Choose the relevant application from the listing, and any query that you enter will be searched for in that application alone. Also, along with each application you can select from the multiple parameters that are associated with each entity.

To search for something, pick the entity in which you want to search, type in your search key, pick the relevant parameter from the listing and hit enter. Similarly, you include multiple parameters in the search to narrow it down.

Note:

Email Search

If you want to search for an email, select the Mail entity from the listing. Within Mail, you can search based on different criteria. When you simply type in a search key without specifying any of the parameters, the relevant parameters will be listed. You can pick the right one, and continue the search. 

You can save the searches for future use. Learn more. 

You can also search the emails from spam and trash folders by turning on the Include emails from Spam/ Trash toggle.

Searching in Streams

A Streams post consists of different entities such as Posts, Notes, Tasks etc. In some cases, you will want to retrieve some data from a certain Streams group or from your own Streams wall.

In this case, you can pick Streams from the listing, and type in your search key. Several parameters such as Posted by, Post contains, @mentioned, commented by, in group are available in the Streams search category. 

When you're sure that the Streams content that you're looking for is either a Note, Task or a message, you can make use of the Filter by option to select the entity that you want to search in. The filter by option will list all the Streams entities that are available.

For example, if you want to search for a post in the group Marketing Discussions, which was posted by Patricia Boyle, change the search entity to Streams. In the search field, choose in group: and pick the Marketing Discussions group from the group listing, then choose posted by: and type in the first few letters of the relevant username or email address. The relevant results will be listed.  

Searching for Notes

You can search for personal Notes that you've added or Group Notes by selecting the Notes entity.

You can search based on the note content, note color, the group to which it was added or the user who added the note. This helps you filter down and search for specific Notes easily.

Event Search

To keep track of events that you've been invited to, meetings or appointments that have been added to group Calendars and to locate specific events, you can search your Calendar based on Title, Location, Organizer etc. You can type in the relevant search key and results from either your personal calendar or the Group Calendars that you've subscribed to will be returned as per your query.

Searching in Tasks

You might be a part of several groups and keeping track of the Tasks in the multiple groups might be difficult.

Sometimes, you'll want to search for a task, but you might not be sure which group it was added to. Or, you might know that a task was assigned to a specific group, but you might not know who assigned it.

In cases like these, the Task search comes in handy. You can search based on any of the Task criteria such as the person who assigned the task, the due date, the group in which it was assigned etc. The search will yield the results based on your search criteria.

Attachment Search

The Attachment Viewer menu in Zoho Mail offers filters to narrow down on the attachment that you're looking for. In addition to that, you can also filter attachments based on the name, the content of the attachment, the file type, file size, the entity it belongs to, received date, tags, favorites or the user who sent it. 

Locating Contacts

Search for Contacts from your mailbox by searching based on the contact fields that you have provided. If you remember the email address of a specific contact, but you need the other details, choose the Contact entity, select the By Email option, and type in the email address. The search results that match with the entered email address will show up. 

Bookmark Search

The Bookmarks application lets you save important links to your mailbox, either to a group or your personal Bookmarks. These Bookmarks can later be launched like you would launch any application from your mailbox. You can search for these Bookmarks using parameters such as the Bookmark Title, Description etc. 

Further, you can save such complex searches to 'Saved Searches'. This helps you to perform the same search in a single click, but get live results from latest emails. Refer here for detailed instructions to use the Saved Searches.

Quick Access

Opening a specific setting, going to a specific folder or Streams group, navigating to a different application, can all be done from the Quick Access option in the search bar. Type in the first few letters of the Streams Group or the Settings page that you want to access, and choose from the options listed. This will directly take you to the required page.

You can also change certain settings options using Quick Access. Enter the following options into the quick access menu and choose the desired option from the listing to apply it to your account:

Search History

You can access your previous searches from the History menu. All your recent searches for that particular session will be displayed here. These search results will not be visible after refreshing your mailbox or after a new login. 

Search Across Zoho

You can also use Search Across Zoho to search for your emails and contacts. Search Across Zoho allows you to easily search for entities in the different Zoho applications. Click on the Search icon at the bottom right corner of your Mailbox to open Search Across Zoho window. You can also use the (cmd + /) keyboard shortcut to launch the window. 

Click on the Mail tab in the left menu of the Search Across Zoho window. Type the name of any contact in the Search bar and press Enter to view a list of all the emails associated with that contact. Along with viewing the emails, you can also reply and forward these emails directly from this search window. You can also select the Search across all Zoho apps option from a contact card to initiate a search for that contact. 

Search across Zoho from Selected Text

You can search across Zoho using a specific content from the email you are currently reading. 

Filter Options

You can narrow down the search results using the filters available.