Search Mail.app Workflow

[jdfwarrior]

Search Mail.app for email messages matching the search query passed.

 

http://d.pr/f/FVd2

 

A few have reported with this not working so I went back and added the option in mdfind to search in a specific folder so that hopefully it would find those results. Report any issues

 

UPDATE: Based on schoeps comment below, I realized that the search I was performing was queueing off of kMDItemKind == 'Mail Message' and depending on your local language, that may not be the appropriate value. So I changed it to search on kMDItemContentType which should be the same across the board. I have confirmed that it works in English and Italian at least.

 

UPDATE: I removed the -onlyin argument from mdfind. Removing the specified folder helps in finding the files with alternate language OS's.

[Enhorn]

Not getting any results.

 

Is it restricted to the inbox? As I have a inbox zero right now, so that could explain it in that case.

The account in question is an Exchange account, if that makes any difference.

[Filoumino]

Not working for me, too. I'm getting no results, no matter what I try. :-(  

[drking]

I can't get it to work either.  

[jdfwarrior]

Are you typing more than 3 characters? It doesn't start until there are 3 characters typed.

 

It isn't restricted to Inbox. It finds in all folders, it's using mdfind to search for mail documents (.emlx files).

 

I don't understand why it isn't working for some.. I've tested on all of my machines (iMac, Macbook Air, and Hackintosh), @binaryghost tested it, and a friend at work and it worked perfectly for all of us.. hrm.. Guess I'll keep trying.

 

If anyone else has success, please let me know so I can confirm that I'm not going crazy

[schoeps]

Hi, it might be a language issue. On my German system 

 

mdfind -live "kMDItemKind == 'Mail Message'

 

does not work, but

 

mdfind -live "kMDItemKind == 'E-Mail'"

 

returns plenty of mails.

[jdfwarrior]

Oh hrm.. thanks for the info.. I'll have to check and see if I can find the OS language and then adjust the query based on that

[rgalps]

Perhaps one of the reasons people think it doesn't work (apart from the language thing) is that it can take a while to return results - as the search is triggered for each key press, they can 'queue' up and your finial search query can take a while to be performed. My inbox has several hundred thousand messages in from across many folders, from mailing lists etc. While limiting the search to not kick in until 3+ characters has improved the speed, it's still slugish. 

 

Does Alfred have anyway of 'delaying' the execution of the workflow script, for say a few hundred milliseconds (configurable on the workflow)? That way searching for messages from "Jo blogs", the search won't actually start until you've finished typing - unless you are a really slow typer - but the results will appear almost instantly. 

 

I can see other benefits of this - especially on the extensions that go off to other web based APIs. 

[jdfwarrior]

Guys, if you don't mind, I just posted a new version of it. Check the note in the first post about what I changed. Let me know if this fixes things. 

 

Thanks

[schoeps]

Great, works for me!

[Filoumino]

Hmpf, still not getting any results.

I tried search terms that definitely should be found and even waited some time. No luck here on a german system.
But I really appreciate your restlessness :-) 

[jdfwarrior]

Do me a favor?

 

1. Drop to a terminal.

2. Run:

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.mail.emlx'"

 

Do you get results?

 

If no, try

mdfind -onlyin "<yourhomepath>/Library/Mail/V2/" "kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.mail.emlx'"

 

Results now?

[simonbs]

Thanks. Great workflow.

[donparr]

This is Great, David, thank you very much, this is timely, extremely useful and very much appreciated   .

[Filoumino]

Do me a favor?

 

1. Drop to a terminal.

2. Run:

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.mail.emlx'"

 

Do you get results?

 

If no, try

mdfind -onlyin "<yourhomepath>/Library/Mail/V2/" "kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.mail.emlx'"

 

Results now?

Your first terminal command works and results in a lot of .emlx files as output!

[Weaselboy]

Thanks David. Nice job. Working perfectly here on 10.8.2.

[BaptistePANNIER]

I'm exactly in the same situation as Filoumino :/

[jdfwarrior]

Your first terminal command works and results in a lot of .emlx files as output!

Ok then we're getting somewhere. The second command is exactly what is used in the workflow. I was trying to target the exact area where the files were but maybe that is different in the alternate languages as well. I'll get a revision posted soon

[ithinkimalion]

Would it be possible to write this to work for something like PostBox?

[Enhorn]

I found out why this didn't work for me.

 

"printf $HOME" results in my home folder path with a trailing "%".

If I changed the home path line to "$home = str_replace('%','',exec('printf $HOME'));" the workflow started to work for me.

 

I use ZSH as my standard shell, perhaps that is whats causing it, because I get no trailing "%" when i start BASH and run the command through that.

[jdfwarrior]

I found out why this didn't work for me.

 

"printf $HOME" results in my home folder path with a trailing "%".

If I changed the home path line to "$home = str_replace('%','',exec('printf $HOME'));" the workflow started to work for me.

 

I use ZSH as my standard shell, perhaps that is whats causing it, because I get no trailing "%" when i start BASH and run the command through that.

 

Ah, interesting. Glad you were able to figure it out. I haven't used ZSH in a while so I would have never caught that.

[fmr]

Thanks for a great workflow. The plugin seems to not work from time to time.  When this happens, I find one of the following errors in /usr/log/system.log

 

Jan 22 16:18:53 SCH-BP-2003.local Alfred 2[8287]: [ERROR] Script XML Parse Error occured Error Domain=NSXMLParserErrorDomain Code=26 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSXMLParserErrorDomain error 26.)"

or:

Jan 22 16:10:34 SCH-BP-2003.local Alfred 2[8287]: [ERROR] Script XML Parse Error occured Error Domain=NSXMLParserErrorDomain Code=4 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSXMLParserErrorDomain error 4.)"

[tconte]

Would it be possible to modify this to narrow the search using specific folders? i.e., search flagged mail OR search VIP mail. 

 

Thanks!

[jdfwarrior]

Probably but I would have to add some kind of id for it to know what's what you were doing. For instance:

Mail @flagged <search>

[cortig]

The Workflow sure works great for me, but I'm trying to understand your approach (and create other workflows on the same idea for other e-mail clients).

Why use a script at all? Can the same thing be done with a filter?

You can limit the scope to ~/Library/Mail/V2 and use the kMDItemAuthorEmailAddresses, kMDItemAuthors and kMDItemSubject metadata fields.

What's wrong with that approach?

 

I'm unsure how it all works, because I've ran into a few things I couldn't figure out when I tried (eg: using kMDItemContentType didn't seem to make any difference at all, that's why I eventually had to resort to limiting the scope).

 

 

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