How do you filter an email search (ie: Subject or From) in iOS 7?

Apple also seems to have removed the ability to filter your email searches by to, from and subject. This is a huge inconvenience for those of us who have to manage many emails every day. For this reason I have not upgraded to IOS 7 on my iPhone 4s. However , I run ios7 on my iPad 4 and many times I have to switch to the iPhone when searching emails. Also, because I run both ios7 and ios6 simultaneously I have discovered a few additional bugs with ios7....

1-Before Apple disabled FaceTime for ios6, I discovered that it was more reliable on ios6. Many times I could not connect on ios7 but could on Ios6. It was never the case the other way around.

2-Siri is also less reliable on my iOS 7 device. Many times it misinterprets what I'm saying. I ran some tests and enabled Siri on the iOS 6 and iOS 7 devices at the same time. During these test I discovered that many times iOS 7 misinterpreted what Was saying however iOS 6 gets it bang on almost every time!

3-Apple states that the new Siri voice is more realistic. But if you compare them side-by-side you will find that this is simply not the case.

4-connections to Wi-Fi on iOS 7 are also less reliable. Many times my iPad is not connected when my iPhone is.

5-Some things are actually slower on ios 7 versus ios 6. Especially email searching.

6-Keyboad changes depending on the app which makes it confusing. Caps lock colours are confusing.

7-Use of colors makes ios7 less intuitive, especially Calandar and notes apps. Steve Jobs must have taken great care to ensure the colors, fonts and icons made for a positive user experience. In my opinion much of this was undone in version 7.

If you have an old and new Apple device kicking around, run some of these tests and you will be surprised.

I fully agree with Konal.. iOS has sucumed to the same rules that no software is really bug free or fully tested. The issues with iOS would not have happened under Steve Jobs. Nasty as he was most of the time, he did believe that quality mattered and would have cared about these types of issues. The sorting bug in the email client is still there and there seems to be no intention to get it fixed.

I am not quite ready to dump my iPhone as overall it is a great product. But... how can I work with this glaring software bug. I have to completely delete my email account every few months and download all my emails again. Fortunatly I have my own email server so I can actually do this. I have no idea how normal users manage.

Thomas

Any signs yet that iOS 8 will correct the omissions in email search under iOS 7?

I hope to the GODS that they fix this in IOS8... I can literally copy and paste the subject of an email I received last night into search and it can't FIND IT.... well let me correct that, I probably is in the results, several hundred emails down. My wife sat next to me with her MBA and did the same search (I had forwarded her the email) and it came back top of list.. The idea that this was ever released as an enhancement is pathetic and makes me seriously consider Andriod. Apple can't break something like this in email... the most important thing on a smart device and not fix it quicker. Honestly the dev team who did this should be pelted with garbage and then fired (really stinky garbage.

Txzaza wrote:

I hope to the GODS that they fix this in IOS8...

It would be a very strange thing if it wasn't fixed in iOS 8, but it's also very strange that it isn't fixed yet in iOS7, so there's no guarantee.

One of the new features of iOS 8 is the ability of apps to communicate with each other, so it might at least be possible for a third party app to do the searching.

Just got an iPhone 5s to replace my 5, which I never upgraded to ios7. This new mail is a MAJOR fail, and I totally agree that Steve Jobs would NEVER had allows such a major setback. Unfortunately, this seems to be a result of Apple's feud with google and samsung. Like the maps issue a few years ago, Apple has no solution for this junk. The only thing to do is download the Gmail app and move the useless Apple mail app out of way. Maybe it'll get its act together in the ios8, but if this is like maps, it's gonna take a few years.

Regrettably, email searching does not appear to have been set right in iOS 8... what has been set right is returning search results in chronological order and that is most welcome. But the all useful and efficient search filters, From:, To:, Subject: and All: [for server-side searching on iMap / Exchange servers] have not been restored... so we appear to be left with substring searches over entire body messages, which for large mailboxes yield way too many irrelevant results... not to mention the extra network traffic and load generated on the email servers. :-(

delaroca wrote:

Regrettably, email searching does not appear to have been set right in iOS 8... what has been set right is returning search results in chronological order and that is most welcome. But the all useful and efficient search filters, From:, To:, Subject: and All: [for server-side searching on iMap / Exchange servers] have not been restored... so we appear to be left with substring searches over entire body messages, which for large mailboxes yield way too many irrelevant results... not to mention the extra network traffic and load generated on the email servers. :-(

You've got the final release? Or a beta? It's not available here yet.

Does entering multiple keywords result in fewer results, or does it still just return emails that match any of the words?

Do you maybe know if this search functionality is returned on ios8?...

YES! It seems to be fixed in ios8. Flagged email is no longer the top result. Now sorted by date as in the past.

Thaatch wrote:

YES! It seems to be fixed in ios8. Flagged email is no longer the top result. Now sorted by date as in the past.

Can you please confirm whether adding more search terms increases or decreases the number of results? I assume there are no longer duplicates after it searches the server?

From the manual, other things it can do, some of which the previous version was supposed to do too, but they didn't work:

“Search for a message. Scroll to or tap the top of the message list to reveal the search field. Searching looks at the address fields, the subject, and the message body. To search multiple accounts at once, search from a smart mailbox, such as All Sent.

Search by timeframe. Scroll to or tap the top of the messages list to reveal the search field, then type something like “February meeting” to find all messages from February with the word “meeting.”

Search by message state. To find all flagged, unread messages from people in your VIP list, type “flag unread vip.” You can also search for other message attributes, such as “attachment.”

Excerpt From: Inc, Apple. “iPhone User Guide For iOS 8.” Apple Inc., 2014. iBooks.

This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=917482340

Hi,

Can anyone tell us if in iOS 8 or 8.1 the search by From-To-Subject-All option is back?

It was so easy and convenient to search in iOS6 by these fields, which unfortunately disappeared in iOS 7.

Does iOS 8/8.1 fix this?

Thanks,

Liran.

No, in 8.1.1 it's still a one field search. However, the results seem to be chrological now. It's not as good as it was, but I no longer have trouble finding what I want.

It still doubles up the search results once it's finished doing the server search.

Yes, bring back the filter option in Mail search. So many messages have multiple people and targeting the sender or the subject line is critical to using iOS for real work. 😠

I want to search by “from” or “to”. Why is that option no longer available?