Searching for messages I "sent" only

ChinaLamb · 25 Aug 2020, 02:34 AM

I'd like to search for messages I sent, while excluding any messages I've received.

For instance, If I sent myself a message, from me@me.com to me@me.com, results in two messages, one is sent, the other is received. Alternatively, I could CC or BCC me@me.com and I'd like to exclude those messages as well -- while ONLY returning the "Sent" version of the message.

How would I go about doing this?

Searching "From: Me@ME.Com" does not come up with the correct answer.

/cl

JamesHenderson · 25 Aug 2020, 04:21 AM

Search in the sent folder only.

ChinaLamb · 25 Aug 2020, 05:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesHenderson

Search in the sent folder only.

They were moved to a separate archive folder... Not in Sent anymore.

JamesHenderson · 25 Aug 2020, 05:52 AM

agh yes, sorry - I think I saw that in the other thread. ...this is why I don't archive my sent emails.

...sorry, I can't help.

Grhm · 25 Aug 2020, 08:47 AM

If I've understood correctly what you are after, this should do it:
In the search box, type

from:me@me.com AND NOT to:me@me.com

(The AND and the NOT have to be in block capitals)

n5bb · 25 Aug 2020, 02:25 PM

No, IMHO after testing that last post won't work. Both the sent and received versions of the message contains your address in both the To and From fields.

You have to search for messages sent to your address which have not been received. You can do this using any of the following equivalent search strings. They show the different allowable syntax for NOT and AND. I recommend using the first version unless the use of - is confusing to you. The last version is the easiest to interpret.

from:me@me.com -header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com
from:me@me.com -(header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com)
from:me@me.com NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com
from:me@me.com AND NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com

AND is implied, so you don't need to explicitly provide it. NOT can be replaced by the negative sign -. Grouping () is not required in these examples but may improve readability.

The search examples I describe above find all messages sent From that one address To that same one address which are located in all folders except Trash and Spam. You can add in:* to the search and the Trash and Spam folders will also be searched, but my testing indicates that there is an undocumented side effect which will return both the sent and received copies if they are in the Trash folder. I haven't tested the Spam folder. This more extensive search string over all folders is:

in:* from:me@me.com -header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com

Bill

ChinaLamb · 25 Aug 2020, 08:15 PM

Thanks, Bill, you always were a saint. This is pointing me down the right track!

I think your assistance helped me get to where I need to be. Instead of X-Delivered-to, I'm using the X-Resolved-To because that should (theoretically) get all my received mail, regardless of whatever domain name I'm using...

The following all seem to work:
from:mydomain.com -X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com

from:me1@gmail.com OR me2@gmail.com OR me@fastmail.com -X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com

AWESOME!

/cl

ChinaLamb · 25 Aug 2020, 08:43 PM

something's not working right...

NOT X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com isn't working

NOT x-delivered-to:username@fasmail.com doesn't work either

Is this not legal to use as a search operator?

n5bb · 25 Aug 2020, 10:08 PM

Sorry - I made a bad copying error when typing my previous post. You need to include ‘header:’. I meant to say:

Code:

from:me@me.com NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com

If you want to handle messages sent to other addresses or delivered to folders, you will need to try this:

Code:

from:me@me.com -header:X-Spam-Score:0.0

The goal is to find messages sent by you which don’t contain headers added during receipt. I thought I could search for the existence of a header (ignoring the value) but I haven’t discovered a method to achieve that goal. As far as I can tell, all messages I send to myself receive a spam score of 0.0, so that works.

Bill

hbs · 26 Aug 2020, 12:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by n5bb

I thought I could search for the existence of a header (ignoring the value) but I haven’t discovered a method to achieve that goal.

Search mail ...

... with header existing:

Code:

header:x-delivered-to

... with header missing:

Code:

-header:x-delivered-to

H.

n5bb · 26 Aug 2020, 02:40 AM

Thanks, hbs! For some reason I hadn't tried removing the colon.

Here are my revised recommendations:

To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which were not delivered to your account in the normal incoming mail fashion, use the following search string. This will find both sent copies of messages originated at your Fastmail account and messages imported into your account from an external source (such as Thunderbird or another email client):
-header:X-Delivered-To
You can add qualifiers such as:
- in:* >> Also search in the Trash and Spam folders
- from:me@me.com >> Only messages with the specified From address
- to:me@me.com >> Only messages with the specified address in To, Cc, or Bcc.
- Various other conditions, such as is:unread, is:read, isinned, is:replied, or has:attachment.

Bill

ChinaLamb · 26 Aug 2020, 05:30 AM

Thanks, Bill and HBS!

Searching for

-header:X-Delivered-To

is an ELEGANT solution to finding "Sent" messages!

Much simpler than the longer and longer search string I was creating!

THANKS!

/cl

elvey · 30 Aug 2020, 04:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

Thanks, Bill and HBS!

Searching for

-header:X-Delivered-To

is an ELEGANT solution to finding "Sent" messages!

Much simpler than the longer and longer search string I was creating!

THANKS!

/cl

Seconding the thanks. I know I'm going to be using this! [Edit: and that ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ]

PS: HBS: Welcome, newbie! (</kidding> Funny cuz I've been here 14 years longer than you.)

n5bb · 30 Aug 2020, 07:04 AM

After further investigation, I think it's better to use the X-Resolved-to header for discovering all messages you sent. That will prevent the search from returning messages placed in your Fastmail account due to the Mail Fetch feature. Here are my latest revised recommendations, including some additional useful searches. If you have a large number of messages in your account it make take a few seconds to complete the search. For example, I have 243,000 messages which take 16.8 GB of storage, and it might take 5 seconds or so to complete a full search if the search isn't cached.

To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which you sent from your Fastmail account, use this search:
-header:X-Resolved-to
To find all message (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) placed in your Fastmail account by the Mail Fetch feature, use this search (which contains a space character before "-header"):
header:X-Resolved-to -header:X-Delivered-To
To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which have not yet been read, use this search (ALL CAPS is required):
UNREAD
To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which were sent from or to someone in your "Group Name" email group, use this search:
fromin:"Group Name" OR toin:"Group Name"
You can add qualifiers such as:
- in:* >> Also search in the Trash and Spam folders
- from:me@example.org >> Only messages with the specified From address
- to:me@example.org >> Only messages with the specified address in To, Cc, or Bcc.
- Various other conditions, such as is:unread, is:read, is:replied, is:flagged, or has:attachment.
Searches can be named and saved using the Save button (which appears at the op of the folder tree when a search is active). If you were searching All Mail, the saved search will be shown at the bottom of the folder tree with the name you gave it. If you were searching in a particular folder (using the Search foldername rather than All mail tool at the top), the saved search will be placed in that folder, similar to a subfolder.

Bill

25 Aug 2020, 02:34 AM	#1
ChinaLamb The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position Posts: 2,320	Searching for messages I "sent" only I'd like to search for messages I sent, while excluding any messages I've received. For instance, If I sent myself a message, from me@me.com to me@me.com, results in two messages, one is sent, the other is received. Alternatively, I could CC or BCC me@me.com and I'd like to exclude those messages as well -- while ONLY returning the "Sent" version of the message. How would I go about doing this? Searching "From: Me@ME.Com" does not come up with the correct answer. /cl

25 Aug 2020, 02:25 PM	#6
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 9,074	Search which finds sent messages but ignores received ones No, IMHO after testing that last post won't work. Both the sent and received versions of the message contains your address in both the To and From fields. You have to search for messages sent to your address which have not been received. You can do this using any of the following equivalent search strings. They show the different allowable syntax for NOT and AND. I recommend using the first version unless the use of - is confusing to you. The last version is the easiest to interpret. from:me@me.com -header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com from:me@me.com -(header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com) from:me@me.com NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com from:me@me.com AND NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com AND is implied, so you don't need to explicitly provide it. NOT can be replaced by the negative sign -. Grouping () is not required in these examples but may improve readability. The search examples I describe above find all messages sent From that one address To that same one address which are located in all folders except Trash and Spam. You can add in:* to the search and the Trash and Spam folders will also be searched, but my testing indicates that there is an undocumented side effect which will return both the sent and received copies if they are in the Trash folder. I haven't tested the Spam folder. This more extensive search string over all folders is: in:* from:me@me.com -header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com Bill Last edited by n5bb : 25 Aug 2020 at 10:17 PM. Reason: Forgot to include header:

25 Aug 2020, 10:08 PM	#9
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 9,074	Correction and improvement Sorry - I made a bad copying error when typing my previous post. You need to include ‘header:’. I meant to say: Code: from:me@me.com NOT header:X-Delivered-To:me@me.com If you want to handle messages sent to other addresses or delivered to folders, you will need to try this: Code: from:me@me.com -header:X-Spam-Score:0.0 The goal is to find messages sent by you which don’t contain headers added during receipt. I thought I could search for the existence of a header (ignoring the value) but I haven’t discovered a method to achieve that goal. As far as I can tell, all messages I send to myself receive a spam score of 0.0, so that works. Bill

26 Aug 2020, 02:40 AM	#11
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 9,074	Revised search recommendations for sent messages Thanks, hbs! For some reason I hadn't tried removing the colon. Here are my revised recommendations: To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which were not delivered to your account in the normal incoming mail fashion, use the following search string. This will find both sent copies of messages originated at your Fastmail account and messages imported into your account from an external source (such as Thunderbird or another email client): -header:X-Delivered-To You can add qualifiers such as: in:* >> Also search in the Trash and Spam folders from:me@me.com >> Only messages with the specified From address to:me@me.com >> Only messages with the specified address in To, Cc, or Bcc. Various other conditions, such as is:unread, is:read, isinned, is:replied, or has:attachment. Bill

30 Aug 2020, 07:04 AM	#14
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 9,074	Using the X-Resolved-to header rather than X-Delivered-To After further investigation, I think it's better to use the X-Resolved-to header for discovering all messages you sent. That will prevent the search from returning messages placed in your Fastmail account due to the Mail Fetch feature. Here are my latest revised recommendations, including some additional useful searches. If you have a large number of messages in your account it make take a few seconds to complete the search. For example, I have 243,000 messages which take 16.8 GB of storage, and it might take 5 seconds or so to complete a full search if the search isn't cached. To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) *which you sent from your Fastmail account, use this search: -header:X-Resolved-to* To find all message (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) placed in your Fastmail account by the *Mail Fetch* feature, use this search (which contains a space character before "-header"): header:X-Resolved-to -header:X-Delivered-To To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which have not yet been read, use this search (ALL CAPS is required): UNREAD To find all messages (in all folders other than Trash or Spam) which were sent from or to someone in your "Group Name" email group, use this search: fromin:"Group Name" OR toin:"Group Name" You can add qualifiers such as: in:* >> Also search in the Trash and Spam folders from:me@example.org >> Only messages with the specified From address to:me@example.org >> Only messages with the specified address in To, Cc, or Bcc. Various other conditions, such as is:unread, is:read, is:replied, is:flagged, or has:attachment. Searches can be named and saved using the Save button (which appears at the op of the folder tree when a search is active). If you were searching All Mail, the saved search will be shown at the bottom of the folder tree with the name you gave it. If you were searching in a particular folder (using the Search foldername rather than All mail tool at the top), the saved search will be placed in that folder, similar to a subfolder. Bill Last edited by n5bb : 30 Aug 2020 at 07:29 AM. Reason: Added comments about search speed

25 Aug 2020, 04:21 AM	#2
JamesHenderson Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Oxfordshire, UK Posts: 603	Search in the sent folder only.

25 Aug 2020, 05:52 AM	#4
JamesHenderson Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Oxfordshire, UK Posts: 603	agh yes, sorry - I think I saw that in the other thread. ...this is why I don't archive my sent emails. ...sorry, I can't help.

25 Aug 2020, 08:47 AM	#5
Grhm Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: UK Posts: 283	If I've understood correctly what you are after, this should do it: In the search box, type from:me@me.com AND NOT to:me@me.com (The AND and the NOT have to be in block capitals)

25 Aug 2020, 08:15 PM	#7
ChinaLamb The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position Posts: 2,320	Thanks, Bill, you always were a saint. This is pointing me down the right track! I think your assistance helped me get to where I need to be. Instead of X-Delivered-to, I'm using the X-Resolved-To because that should (theoretically) get all my received mail, regardless of whatever domain name I'm using... The following all seem to work: from:mydomain.com -X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com from:me1@gmail.com OR me2@gmail.com OR me@fastmail.com -X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com AWESOME! /cl

25 Aug 2020, 08:43 PM	#8
ChinaLamb The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position Posts: 2,320	something's not working right... NOT X-Resolved-to:username@fastmail.com isn't working NOT x-delivered-to:username@fasmail.com doesn't work either Is this not legal to use as a search operator?

26 Aug 2020, 05:30 AM	#12
ChinaLamb The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position Posts: 2,320	Thanks, Bill and HBS! Searching for -header:X-Delivered-To is an ELEGANT solution to finding "Sent" messages! Much simpler than the longer and longer search string I was creating! THANKS! /cl