Searching lets you find messages, contacts, appointments, and Briefcase files. You can search by specific words, by dates, time, URL, size, tag, whether or not a message has been read, whether it has file attachments or attachments of a particular file type and more.
Zimbra Collaboration Server offers two search tools:
Search. This is a quick search that executes whatever search query is currently displayed in the search text box. You can enter one of the search key words in the search field and a list of possible search arguments is automatically displayed. In addition, the drop-down arrow at the left of the search box allows you to select which type of items to search for. You can select to search within messages, your contacts, including company contact lists, tasks, appointments and files. This is an aid to quick searches as described in Quick-search settings.
Advanced search opens a new pane and makes it easier to execute more complex searches. You can save your advanced search queries and re-execute them at a later date.
If you know where to search for your item, you can enter one of the following keywords followed by a colon in the Search field and a list of possible options to select is displayed.
tag:
in:
under:
is:
has:
type:
attachment:
If you are familiar with text-match searches or word-processing features such as the Find/Change in Microsoft Word, note that the content search in the Zimbra Web Client is slightly different from performing a literal string match.
ZCS search syntax works as follows:
You can search for phrases, but each word within that phrase is matched literally by whole-word only. Spelling variants are not allowed. For example, if you search for bananas, messages with banana are not a match. You can search by domain name including the "." (period)
Search is not case sensitive; South, south, and SOUTH are all the same thing.
These special characters cannot be used in your search text. ~ ' ! # $ % ^ & * () _- + ? / { }[ ] ; : "
Special characters, such as trademark symbols that are part of a word, are removed when the word is indexed for search. When these special characters are used in a search query as part of a whole word search, they are ignored. For example, a search for Zimbra™ finds all references to Zimbra, including those without the trademark symbol.
The single asterisk * as a wildcard at the end of a word is supported. That is search for do* returns items with the word dog, door, etc. Note: A double-byte asterisk sign in a search query is not considered a wild card character and is ignored when the search runs.
Searching for content will search the body of a message plus any (system-readable) file attachments it may have. A system-readable file attachment is a type of file that can be converted to HTML-viewable text. These include Microsoft Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, or Excel), as well as text files, but not image or audio files.
Go to the following topics for descriptions of how to create complex queries.
Query language description. This describes a list of keywords to use in your search.
AND versus OR Searches. Explains how to use And and Or in your search.