Virtual Folders

The Virtual Folders feature are accessed via the toolbar button and Folder menu of the program's main window. It can also be accessed via the Edit -> Search Folders... menu entry. And the button by that name on the Address Book window will also give you a Virtual Folder of messages to or from the selected address.

When accessed using the toolbar button, the Folder -> Create a virtual folder... menu, or the Edit -> Search folders... menu, this function results in the Virtual Folder Specification dialog. This lets you select which type of search you want to perform, and specify which folders you want included in the search.

The top four radio buttons allow you to specify the how the criteria should be applied in the search.

  • All - All specified criteria must match for the message to be added to the Virtual Folder.
  • Any - Any of the specified criteria that match will result in the message being added to the Virtual Folder.
  • One - Only one of the criteria must match for the message to be added to the Virtual Folder. If multiple criteria match the message, it will not be added to the Virtual Folder.
  • No Criteria - None of the criteria must match for the message to be added to the Virtual Folder.

    Polarbar will search the index files for every folder in the current account and open the Virtual Folder results window to show you all of the messages matching your search criteria. The exceptions to this are the body contains, criteria which makes the program search each entire message instead of only the index files, and the Headers criteria which reads only the headers of each message. In addition, the Body search can be restricted to not search attachments.

    Once the criteria are specified and "OK" is selected, the criteria will be ordered with the fastest tests performed first, and the indexes and messages in the selected folders will be scanned. Note that once OK is pressed, the criteria are saved and will be restored the next time a Virtual Folder is opened.

    During the search, a progress dialog is presented. If Stop is selected, the Virtual Folder will be shown with any matched messages found up to the point that Stop was pressed. If Cancel is pressed the Virtual Folder is closed without displaying any results.

    If message body is to be searched, best performance is obtained by including other index criteria in the search.

    Other buttons on this dialog are:

  • Clear - Unselects all criteria and clears their input fields.
  • Cancel - Closes the dialog without saving any of the criteria.

    The Virtual Folder results window is very much like the program's main window. The message list panel has one additional column which tells you the name of the folder where each of the found messages actually resides. If you add a sticky note to a message in this window,  delete it, or move it, you'll be performing those actions upon the file in that folder, not just the one in the Virtual Folder results window. The messages in this window are not copies of the originals, but pointers to the originals.

    The results folder can be further searched by using the "Edit -> Search Results" option which repeats the process on the subset of messages currently in the Virtual Folder.


    Virtual Folder Criteria