Apple desktop search with email preview

evbart — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:03:38 GMT

Is there a mac os x desktop search application that searches through all your emails like spotlight , but can also give you a preview of that e-mail without having to open it up in mail or entourage?

In spotlight, when you do a search for a document or e-mail, you don't get a preview of the e-mails, so you have to double click on each one to read whats inside. I'd rather just scroll through the list and see a preview.

Update: Yes, having it work with Entourage is a requirement. Thats what I use at work, and spotlight searches well through both Entourage and Mail, giving me one easy way to access both. Having a preview would keep me from having to open up the e-mail each time to browse through them.

I did find an appliation that is very close to doing this, though it offers more previews than spotlight, it does not offer previews of the mail:

http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/index.html

RE: Apple desktop search with email preview

thordur — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:25:14 GMT

The way spotlight works in OS X Tiger does not allow for previews. All spolight does is index cache files that entourage generates. The cache files that entourage creates contain a set of metadata and does not include the message itself in this set. As far as I'm aware of there are no third party search applications that provides a preview. But there is hope. In the next major OS X upgrade, Leopard, Apple promises preview functionality in Spotlight ('Quick View'). If this only allows for preview from Apple applications is uncertain, but we can only hope they include an API that allows Microsoft and others to implement this new preview functionality. Time will show, Leopard will arrive first half of 2007.

RE: Apple desktop search with email preview

sdfjkl — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:20:57 GMT

Simply use the builtin Apple Mail search - you don't need a desktop search application. Open Apple Mail, type a search term into the search box (top right corner of the toolbar) and press return. Apple Mail will show you a list of matching messages (and you can select where to search in the top row). When you click the first message, a standard preview pane opens and shows you the contents while letting you browse the other messages above it.