Question involving search logic

Ryan1 · Post by **Ryan1** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 12:57 pm

I have never been able to grasp the concept of the search logic used in the Zimbra search box to search mail. Nothing seems to ever work as I expect.

Here is a simple example to start with:

I have two mailboxes set up in ZD: abc@gmail.com and def@gmail.com

If I select the "All Mailboxes" icon and put the following search string in I get some of the messages from each of the mailboxes, but not all of them. I get maybe 5 or 10% of all the messages in those boxes.
to:(abc@gmail.com) OR cc:(abc@gmail.com) OR from:(abc@gmail.com) OR to:(def@gmail.com) OR cc:(def@gmail.com) OR from:(def@gmail.com)

Why don't I get all the messages in boxes abc@gmail.com and def@gmail.com?

What am I missing? Can someone explain what is going on here? Thank you.
PS: There aren't that many messages in either of these mailboxes so the problem can't be that there are too many messages... unless a search can only get a small number of messages. And if that's the case, it isn't of any use.

Ryan1 · Post by **Ryan1** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 1:20 pm

OK, I am *maybe* seeing what the problem is. With a permutation of the above search string (which should have exactly the same results), I seem to be getting more, if not all of the messages at least being "seen" by the search. But the problem is that it is so slow to load messages, that it takes forever for them to show up in the search results list. I guess it must work backward in time because the older messages are slowly appearing a few at a time if I scroll up and down enough. But at this rate it would take forever to see all of the messages that match the string.

So at this point I am not sure if it logic bugs, or just terrible performance. Either way, is there any way to get this to work so that it shows all messages in both boxes in some reasonable amount of time?

Then there is the problem of it producing multiple copies of the same search when I save it. AYYYYYYY! ZD is so buggy it's impossible to tell what the heck is going on half the time.

Ryan1 · Post by **Ryan1** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 1:27 pm

Two more notes. I upped the items fetched when scrolling to 200. That seems to improve the speed of loading messages a bit or at least reduces the need to scroll so much to go back in time. Note 2, when I change the "View" to "By Conversation" instead of "By Message," I can't get the older messages to appear no matter how much scrolling I do. Why?

Could it be that the conversation view isn't supported for messages before some time in mid 2014 so all of the messages before that don't show up in that view?

Back to my original thought: Nothing seems to work the way I would expect.

Ryan1 · Post by **Ryan1** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:38 pm

It's lucky I'm here to reply to my own posts or I'd think no one else at all will ever reply.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful because after all I am using ZD for free... and you can't beat that. But honestly, this may the worst forum I have ever seen. It's essentially useless.