A working mailbox has thousands of messages after a year of trading, tens of thousands after three or four. Finding the one you need in 10 seconds depends on knowing how SmartXHosting webmail search works — the quick box, the advanced filters, the operators and the indexing behaviour.
The search bar appears at the top of every folder view.
Results are sorted newest-first by default, same as a folder view.
By default, quick search looks in the current folder only. If you are in the Inbox, it searches only the Inbox. To search across all folders, switch the scope:
Scope is remembered across sessions, so if you always search across all folders, set it once and webmail remembers.
Click the downward arrow next to the search bar (or tap Advanced on mobile) to open the advanced search form:
Combine any fields. Logical AND across fields (all must match). Within a field, multiple comma-separated entries are logical OR.
Axigen supports IMAP-style operators directly in the quick search bar as shortcuts for advanced filters:
| Operator | Example | Matches |
|---|---|---|
from: | from:hmrc.gov.uk | Messages from anyone at hmrc.gov.uk |
to: | to:[email protected] | Messages sent to the sales alias |
subject: | subject:"VAT return" | Subject contains "VAT return" |
has:attachment | has:attachment | Only messages with one or more attachments |
is:unread | is:unread | Unread messages only |
is:flagged | is:flagged | Flagged messages only |
before: / after: | after:2026-01-01 | Date range in ISO format |
larger: / smaller: | larger:5MB | Size filter in KB or MB |
Combine freely: from:hmrc.gov.uk subject:"self assessment" after:2026-01-01 finds all HMRC Self Assessment correspondence from this year.
"annual report 2025" matches only that sequence, not any message containing all three words scattered.invoice* matches invoice, invoices, invoiced, invoicing. Leading wildcards (*voice) are not supported — the index is word-prefix only.- to exclude — invoice -draft finds invoices but not drafts.acme OR initech.After running a search, the result list can be resorted:
You can further refine results by applying additional filters from the left pane (desktop) or the Filter button (mobile) — narrow to flagged, unread, attachments, etc. without re-running the base query.
Axigen builds a full-text index of every message as it arrives. The index covers:
Not indexed:
Fresh messages are indexed within seconds of arrival. Search is near-real-time.
Messages moved to an Archive folder remain fully searchable — they are just in a different folder. Archive is a semantic concept (long-term retention), not a storage tier.
For compliance archives external to Axigen (e.g. Smarsh, Mimecast Archive) used by FCA-regulated UK businesses, search happens in the archive provider's own UI — webmail does not see those messages after they are journalled externally.
Q: Can I search inside PDF attachments?
A: Yes, for text-based PDFs. Scanned PDFs (image-only) are not OCR'd by default and so the text inside is not indexed. OCR is available as an optional add-on on some plans.
Q: Is search case-sensitive?
A: No. All queries are lowercased internally.
Q: Why does a search miss a message I know exists?
A: Most common reasons: the search scope is wrong (searching only the Inbox when the message is in an Archive folder); the term is inside an image; the exact wording differs from what you remembered. Try broader terms or date-range filters instead.
Q: Can I save a search as a smart folder?
A: Yes, in desktop webmail. Click Save as smart folder after running the query. The smart folder re-runs the search dynamically on each view.
Q: Does search work offline in mobile webmail?
A: No. All searches query the server. The mobile PWA caches recently viewed messages for offline reading, but not the full index.