Folders and search

Folders and search

Layout

On wide screens, folders sit in the panel beside the dashboard sidebar. On narrower screens they fold into a drawer: open it with the panel button beside search. The envelope button beside search filters the current view to unread messages.

One folder tree for the organization

Shipmail shows one custom-folder tree for your organization. Create a folder once, then drag messages from any mailbox you can access onto the full folder row. Shipmail moves a mixed selection separately inside each source mailbox, so message ownership, sender identity, storage, and access never change. The first use in a mailbox creates the matching physical folder there. Each physical mailbox can hold up to 500 custom folders.

Standard folders such as Inbox, Archive, Junk, and Trash remain relative to each mailbox. Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, and other IMAP or JMAP clients continue to show ordinary per-account folders. Shipmail reconciles a folder created or renamed in another client. It holds path collisions for someone with access to every mailbox to review instead of combining them.

Any member can create and use a folder visible through a mailbox they can access. People with access to every mailbox manage shared hierarchy changes such as rename and delete. If part of a mixed-mailbox move fails, Shipmail keeps successful moves, restores only failed groups, and reports the affected mailbox. You can undo a successful move while its recorded mailbox state is unchanged.

Search

Select Search mail in the list header, or press / or ⌘K, to open the search window. In the body of a message you are writing, ⌘K adds a link instead. Results update as you type and match prefixes, common typos, the subject, sender, recipients, message body, and extracted text from supported attachments. You can combine search with the mailbox scope and the unread and assignment filters.

A search started from Inbox, Starred or Snoozed looks through all mail in the mailboxes you are browsing, every folder except Trash and Junk. A search started from any other folder, such as Sent, Archive, Drafts or one of your own folders, looks only in that folder. Each result shows the passage that matched, with your words highlighted, and the folder it is in when the search covers all mail.

The first matching messages appear in the window. Press Enter on one to open it, or press Enter before choosing one to show every result in the list. The list then shows your search and its result count, with a button to clear it. Next to the result count, switch between All mail and the folder you started from. When a search stays in one folder, the end of its results says how many more matches the other folders hold; select that line to search all mail.

People

Above the mail results, People lists up to four contacts and recent recipients whose name or address matches what you typed, from every mailbox you can access. Choose one to search every message they are on: mail they sent, mail sent to them, and mail they were copied on. Their address replaces your text as a with: filter, and the results offer a link to search for the words you typed instead.

A saved contact with several addresses is one row, marked with the number of other addresses. Choosing it searches all of them at once, up to 10, so mail from an old address and a new one shows in one list. The filter chip shows the contact's name and how many more addresses it covers.

When the best match writes from a company domain, People also offers Everyone at that domain, which searches every message with anyone at it, such as with:@example.com. Shared providers such as Gmail or Outlook never get this row.

On a contact's page, Conversations opens the same search for all of the contact's addresses.

Search filters

Select the filter button in the search window to narrow results by sender, recipient, date, or whether a message has an attachment. Applied filters appear as chips inside the search field and can be edited or removed individually. You can also type the same filters. The operator becomes a chip as soon as you type its colon, and Space or Enter completes the value. Results update while you type the value:

• from:billing@example.com matches a sender, and to:me@example.com matches a recipient.
• with:client@example.com matches a participant: the sender, a recipient, or someone copied. List up to 10 addresses separated by commas, such as with:old@example.com,new@example.org, to match any of them. Each message appears once, even when several of the addresses are on it.
• after:2026-08-01 starts at that date, while before:2026-09-01 stops before that date. Typed dates must use YYYY-MM-DD, and Before must be later than After.
• has:attachment keeps only messages with at least one attachment.

Filters use AND logic, so every part must match. For example, invoice from:billing@example.com after:2026-08-01 has:attachment finds messages that contain invoice, come from that sender, arrived after the date boundary, and include an attachment. Put a value containing spaces in double quotes, such as from:"Billing Team". The unread envelope remains a separate filter beside search.

A search for several addresses counts each address on its own, so a message several of them are on is counted once. Its result count is a minimum: selecting every match reads "at least" that number.

The Sent folder

In Sent, the address selector beside search shows messages sent from one primary mailbox address or alias. It follows the mailbox scope you are browsing: one selected mailbox opens Sent on that address, and no selected mailbox opens All addresses. When you can reach a single mailbox, Sent starts on your saved default sender for an account sign-in, or the exact address used for a mailbox sign-in.

Attachment contents are searchable, but attachment filenames alone are not matched in the current mail-server version.

Automatic sorting

To sort mail automatically as it arrives, create an AI assistant automation.