Might as well face it, I'm addicted to search

I've been a Eudora user since the mid 1990s.  Hating the UTF-8 glitches these days.  Wanted to try Pandora.  I truly appreciate the Pandora effort.

The Eudora search is so powerful, though.  I have over 200,000 work emails going back to the late 1990s and I search these regularly.  I often am called on by coworkers to get some historical technical detail that they were not able to find in Thunderbird or Outlook searches and I can get them in 3 seconds.

My hundreds of thousands of emails imported into Pandora fine.  The creating of the TOC for the mailboxes took hours, then the creation of the fast search index took hours.  However, while I can get the search to work, it is less powerful and far slower than Eudora.  For example, I typed the name of a client I had worked with on and off through the years and the 2990 relevant emails came up in less than 2 seconds in Eudora (searching headers and content).  In Pandora Mail, it found the same messages, but even with the fast search indexes built, the search took over 20 minutes.  Also, the lack of partial word searches is problematic to my work flow.

So this issue will delay my move to Pandora Mail, I'm afraid.

I wonder if it would be possible to incorporate some 3rd party open-source ultra-fast search in the code, though I know that is easier said than done.

Another ultra fast search I'm addicted to is "Everything" by void tools which will, for example, do a partial-word search on the nearly 3 million files on my work machines in a fraction of a second.  So the algorithms are out there to perform these indexed searches, I'm not sure how easy they are to build or find in an open-source shareable library...

Thanks for your considerable efforts to save a Eudora-like email platform!

Fast Search Index built does not mean it will be used automatically for every search. For that:

Toggle Use Fast Search Index button (bottom left) before conducting the search.

I had that button toggled.

But now I've clicked to build the fast search indexes again and it's restarting the tasks. (The task list had previously cleared meaning I thought it was done. But maybe it was inadvertently cancelled for some reason.) Anyway, I'll let that index build again and hopefully I'll have better luck this time. I'll let you know.

Under Settings/Background Tasks you have check-box - Build Fast Search Index after __ minutes of user inactivity.
When checked, missing indexes, for all user-mailboxes, are built while you are not using Pandora.

When you delete/move messages from indexed mailbox, it's fast-search-index is deleted immediately.
It's not rebuilt right-away (we want to avoid annoying scrape-rebuild while Pandora is in use) - instead it will be rebuilt during the idle time (or you can do it manually).

When you search any system mailbox (In, Out etc.) or mailbox that is not indexed for fast search, conventional search is used instead. So if at least one non-indexed mailbox is checked - that will slow down overall search. When fsi exist a jolt image is displayed inside corresponding task. Not that you can see it, it just flashes; if there is no jolt - it's conventional search.

Fast search applies for whole words only (it was the same in Eudora, maybe it was just not displayed upfront), reason being - index files are huge when partial words are included.
Very first beta version had that, worked flawlessly, but single index file would reach few hundred gigs in no time.

Thank you for your response.

Here's an update. I did manage to complete the fast search index in Pandora. Then the search I mentioned above took about 30 seconds as opposed to the 20 plus minutes cited. So fast but still a factor of 10 slower than what I saw in Eudora.

I then used Pandora for a while for correspondence and I like it. Later in the week I did another search in Pandora and things were very slow again. I think the messages in my in box did not get added to the fast index so they were slow search. Again, a simple search took minutes when previously I had searched everything in much less time. So is it true that you must fast index a mailbox prior to search each time to capture the new material? Or maybe there's something wrong with my installation or my use of the software.

Also, I will note that I am testing Eudora here and the instantaneous fast search that I'm addicted to is giving me partial word responses. So this x1 search is just exceptional and it has kept me anchored to Eudora despite the fact that I can't read some incoming emails without strange characters everywhere and the fact that I need to spend time formatting things to pull out those strange characters when responding...

Thanks for your ongoing heroic efforts to modernize us the email software that we know and love.

jclough wrote:Thank you for your response.  

You welcome!

jclough wrote:Here's an update.  I did manage to complete the fast search index in Pandora.  Then the search I mentioned above took about 30 seconds as opposed to the 20 plus minutes cited.  So fast but still a factor of 10 slower than what I saw in Eudora.

Pandora is averaging 2 seconds per 200 MB mailbox, not counting results-population, which is about the same as X1, or faster.
Results-population takes longer as it is not quite optimized for fast search yet.

So regarding your 30 seconds search - when you familiarize yourself with Pandora a bit, send us the feedback if you will and please specify:
- How many mailboxes were scanned.
- Where there any additional criteria specified.
- Number of messages found.
- Total seconds count without results population - up to a point when progress bar reaches 100% and disappears.

To send feedback just hit Help/Send Feedback/Report a Bug, from the main menu.

jclough wrote:So is it true that you must fast index a mailbox prior to search each time to capture the new material?  

Under Settings/Background Tasks, find "Build Fast Search Index after _0_ minutes of user inactivity." Change 0 to 5. Hit OK.
When it's zero you have to index it "manually" (Build Fast Search Index button).

jclough wrote:Also, I will note that I am testing Eudora here and the instantaneous fast search that I'm addicted to is giving me partial word responses.  

Try this:
1. Compose a new message, type inside message body: program
2. Save the message, and wait for Eudora to rebuild the index or go to Tools/Options/Find Messages and hit Re-index Email.
3. Wait until it rebuilds the index, hit Find Messages and check Out, un-check all other mailboxes.
4. Check Use Fast-indexed Search, and search: gram (Anywhere contains).

There are no results. X1 supports whole words only, no partial words.

jclough wrote:Thanks for your ongoing heroic efforts to modernize us the email software that we know and love.

You most welcome, and thank you for your feedback. Since you are, as you say addicted to search, send us your valuable findings every chance you have, if you find time for it - it won't be time wasted.

Very interesting on the x1 search. It finds "prog" but not "gram" So it performs well in partial searches at the beginning of words which is what I've always used (e.g. searching for "histor" and finding "history," "histories," "historical," etc.) to the extent that I did not even recognize that it doesn't do partial searches at the end of words.

Will continue to test and provide feedback. Thanks! -- JC

I just installled v.4 on my desktop; still have v. 3.9.1 on my laptop, so I can compare the GUIs.

The "build fast search index" function is still under Settings/General/Background Tasks, but the "Build Fast Search Index" button is gone from the "Find Messages" window.

There is nothing really intuitive about any of this, so with v.4:

1. How does one build an intial Fast Search Index?

2. How does one update a Fast Search Index?

3. Does one ever need to delete the indexes and start over?

4. Why is the "Build" button gone from the "Find Messages" window?

MailboxCat is Pandora's very own fast search indexing service. It builds all outdated fsi files automatically, there is nothing you have to do (on a daily basis anyway), and
that's part of it's purpose.

Service has to be registered once, and started, that's it. Normally installer does registration bit and when you start Pandora it will be started, if it's not running already.

To stop the service, and tell Pandora not to start the service on start-up, click "Fast Search Indexing Service - Stop".
To stop and un-register the service, hold down Ctrl key and hit 'Fast Search Indexing Service - Stop'.

Hi, I am also having some of the problems mentioned in the first post from 2020 with search. If I search "anywhere" in a single mailbox the search will often seemingly stop without results - or after a few minutes I stop it anyway through frustration. Even when I click stop, nothing happens. I notice it works better if I narrow down the search to subject or even body, but I prefer to use "anywhere", and I do depend heavily on search for productivity.

I notice there is sometimes an indication of CPU use going up and down between 60 and 100% during searches. It looks as if this high CPU use is freezing the search,  and indeed the programme.

NB The fast search index appears to be on in settings, and I found mailboxcat switched on in autoruns.