Using In-place Search for Exchange
When preserving an Office 365 or Exchange mailbox using Exchange Web Services (EWS), it is possible to perform pre-acquisition searches to narrow down the data set. You can launch the in-place search interface for Exchange by clicking the "Perform Pre-Acquisition Search" link as shown below.
FEC in-place search allows you to execute your search query on the server side and preview the search results. The search syntax is identical to Advanced Query Syntax (AQS). The accuracy of the search results is dependent on the capabilities of the Exchange server executing the search.
Note: The search is performed only in the selected mail folders. So, you can exclude certain folders from the search by deselecting them using the checkboxes in the screenshot above before you launch the in-place search interface.
What You Can Search For
You can run AQS searches for a keyword without specifying a property. This would result in all indexed properties being searched for that keyword.
Example: contract
You can also specify the property to be searched by including the property name as a keyword.
Example: subject:contract
Supported AQS keywords are as follows:
| Keyword |
Value type |
Example |
|---|---|---|
| subject | String | subject:contract |
| body | String | body:contract dispute |
| attachment | String | attachment:report |
| to | String | to:"John Doe" |
| from | String | from:brown |
| cc | String | cc:"Jane Doe" |
| bcc | String | bcc:daniel |
| participants | String | participants:jack |
| category | String | category:project |
| importance | String | importance:high |
| kind | Item type | kind:meetings |
| sent | Date | sent:11/30/2015 |
| received | Date | received:yesterday |
| hasattachment | Boolean | hasattachment:true |
| isflagged | Boolean | isflagged:true |
| isread | Boolean | isread:false |
| size | Number | size:>4000 |
String Searches
By default, a string value is searched as a case-insensitive prefix substring search. For example, searching for subject:contract would match any of the following subjects:
- Contract dispute
- How to deal with severe contractions
If you enclose the value in quotes, the entire word would be required rather than matching prefixes. So, searching for subject:"contract" would not match the second subject containing the word "contractions".
Including multiple words in a query string would require all of the words to be present in the search fields. For example, searching for subject:contract dispute would match any of the following subjects:
- Contract dispute
- Disputed contracts
Finally, enclosing the query string in quotes causes multiple words to be treated as a phrase. So, if you search for
Date Searches
You can search for specific dates in mm/dd/yyyy format.
Example: received:12/21/2016
You can also use the greater than, less than and range operators as follows:
- received:>7/30/2016
- sent:<=11/9/2011
- received:8/21/2015..9/7/2016
Boolean Operators
The following Boolean operators are supported:
| Operator |
Examples |
|---|---|
| AND | contract AND from:"Jack Daniels" subject:(contract AND dispute) |
| OR | subject:contract OR from:"Jane Doe" from:("Jack Daniels" OR "John Doe") |
| NOT | NOT from:"Jane Doe" received:NOT today |
Saving the Search Query
Once you have finalized your search query, you can save it by using the SAVE button. This will close the in-place search window and activate your query. You will see a notice as in the screenshot below:
Clearing the Search Query
If you would like to clear the search query, you can click on the small (x) symbol next to the "Search Query Activated" text as shown in the figure above.
Limitations of Exchange Search
The search functionality built into Exchange and utilized by FEC is limited to the documents that Exchange servers are able to recognize and index. For instance, a proprietary CAD file unrecognized by an Exchange server, or files inside an encrypted file archive would not be indexed or searched. Similarly, if a file has no extractable text (e.g., a scanned TIFF image of a document), an Exchange server would not be able to extract text from it or index it.
Given the above limitations, it may be appropriate to use the Exchange search functionality in FEC to filter messages by top-level message characteristics such as sender, recipient and subject content. Keep these limitations in mind if you plan to use this functionality to perform a blanket search intended to search all documents and their attachments recursively.