Email - cannot search in body of mails

[bmf1001]

Using BTMail (webmail) It is not possible to reliably search emails for key words that appear in the body of the message.  Searching for key words in the email Subject works OK, but if I enter a keyword into the 'Body' field of the search box, I get a 'Loading...' animation for several seconds (sometimes quite a few seconds wait here...), then it usually comes back with 'Empty search list'.

I have seen this work on a very few occasions, but it is not at all reliable.  Is there a timeout on the search such that it gives up if the search takes too long, and a very inefficient search is being done that will be very likely to timeout?

Please do not tell me to use an email client on my computer.  I want to use webmail from a number of different locations and search where ever I am located, not just on the computer that has a mail client on it.

Needless to say, the search facility worked very well before BT changed the email provider from Yahoo to their own home-brew version.

[Les-Gibson]

How are you searching?

The Search The Inbox field behaves as you described because it only searches for emails on the subject you enter (if that makes sense). You can search the body of the email (once you've found and opened it) with Ctrl F 

[Aljaha]

Do you change the search criteria to "All Folders"? as this works for me.

[bmf1001]

Hi,

Thanks for your message.  I am using the full search that appears when you click the down-arrow next to 'Search the Inbox'.  I want to search the 'body' of emails, not just the subject line.  Eg, see below:

I realise I can use Ctrl-F to search on a page, but that assumes I have already found the email I want.  In this case, I want to search all my mails for the matching term.

In the options shown above, it does not make any difference whether I set Folder to be 'Inbox' or 'All folders'.  I still get 'Empty search list' rather than the emails that I know for sure contain the search term within their body.

Thanks

[Les-Gibson]

An obvious question but one that needs to be asked.

Are you changing the 'From Date' in the form to a valid date, i.e in your example the From Date is todays date, so if you're looking for an email you received yesterday and contains the word Avocado then you will need to enter yesterdays date into that field.

[bmf1001]

Hi Les-Gibson,

The default date that is set in the search window is one year ago from today, not today's date. So the search is over the last 12 months and thus should find results.

Thanks

[Aljaha]

Further to my earlier reply, as I do not normally use search I just did a quick check which seemed to work.

I have since tried again with a word that I know is in some emails and again I get a list but one which I know has the word in as least 4 times does not appear, so it looks as if the facility is selective in giving results.

I have no knowledge how computers work but wonder if it is how the emails are composed, as looking at the source for two of them, gives different information.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge can help.

Sorry not much help.

[bmf1001]

Hi Aljaha,

Thanks for your info. You have highlighted the problem well: you know a mail is there, but the search does not find it for you. So it is a pretty useless search facility in this new BT Mail if it does not reliably find all occurrences.

BT Mail should be fixed to make this important feature work correctly.

[dc12]

This is still not working - very frustrating - all I get is "loading..." and a spinning wheel, then after a minute or so - "Error, an unexpected error has occurred, OK".  Is this other people's experience?