Cross Mailbox Search

Cross mailbox search searches for content across live and archive mailboxes.  (Live mailboxes include mailboxes in any status; active, maintenance, closed, or locked.) The results are copied to a folder in a target mailbox you specify.

Note: Because the results are copied to the target mailbox, your server data content increases. When you no longer need the information, good practice is to delete the content of the folder.

The Search Mail Content pane displays cross-mailbox search tasks that are in process or completed. You can delete search tasks from this list when a search is complete or when you abort a search task. When the mail server is restarted, the list is cleared.

When a search is complete, you can click View Results in the Search Mail gear icon to see the results of the search. You can also specify email addresses to receive automatic email notification when the search is complete and go to that mailbox to see the results.

X-Zimbra-Source header information that includes the account ID, the account name, and the server where the account resides is added to each header of messages that are copied to the targeted mailbox and looks like the following:

To create a cross mailbox search:

1. Go to Tools and Migration>Search Mail.

2. In the gear icon click New.

3. In the Search Query section, enter the search query criteria. You can click Advanced to build a more detailed search query. As you select from the Advanced panes, the Search query field displays the query string.

For help creating a query, see the Search Tips article on the Zimbra wiki. When searching archive messages, you can search by the envelope address using the envfrom and envto query language extensions.

4. In the Search results section select a target mailbox from the list, or click Create New Account.

When you create target mailboxes, good practice is to give the mailboxes a unique prefix so that you can quickly find target mailboxes in your list of accounts. For example: CMS_user1.example.com. CMS means cross mailbox search. With this practice, all target mailboxes are listed together.

5. In the Limit the number of messages returned by the search field, enter the number of searches you want returned.  

6. In Mail folder for results, enter a folder name.

This folder receives the email messages found in the search. You can use one target mailbox for all your searches and create new folders for every search. Note: If you use the same folder for more than one search task and the same message is found, the message will be duplicated in the folder.

7. In the Accounts section select to search all accounts or select specific accounts to search.

When Select accounts to search is selected, enter specific account addresses to search, including archive accounts.

8. In the Scope section, select which mailboxes to search: archive mailboxes, live mailboxes, and dumpster folders for accounts with dumpster feature enabled.  

9. To send an email with the results when the search results are complete, in the Notification section, check Send an email notification when search completes.

10.  In the Send notification to text box enter the email addresses to receive notification. The default configuration for the  notification text message sends the following information.

    • The cross mailbox search task ID and if the search results included errors or not

    • Number of messages that were copied to the folder

    • The search query that is used in the search

 To learn more about creating a notification message, see Cross Mailbox Search Notification Emails.

11. In the gear icon, click Run Search.

As the search is being run, the Search Mailbox Content pane lists the search and the status.

12. Delete the search task when completed.

Important:  It is good practice to delete finished search tasks after they are completed, as they occupy server memory.

1. • To stop a search task that is in process, click Abort in the gear icon. You can then delete the search task from the list.

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