I want

Google Desktop is a really nice solution not only for the emails but also for any file you got stored. It will index every file and shows the results of your search as fast as the web google search does. The only thing you'll need is to have the emails stored in your hard disk, I mean in any email software.

http://desktop.google.com/mac/

I hope this helps you.

Thanks, but I had Google Desktop installed and it was a dog. Besides, I don't know that it is a good idea to rely on the proprietary formats of a particular supplier. In 30 years, I may not be able to access my email.

Haven't you heard of the delete button??

What's wrong with Spotlight?

On delete: A lot of this is stuff I want to keep for various reasons - such as correspondence with Actual Authorities, or discussion groups that cover material I am interested in and will one day return to.

Spotlight has a problem in that it only indexes Apple Mail, which is something I can't use at my university because of a stupid configuration for the mailservers here involving Exchange. Don't get me started. Besides, Spotlight finds too many hits, as it lacks a query language (a problem I'm finding with the thousands of PDFs I have on my 'puter).

glimpse http://webglimpse.net/ (but I'm don't know about the OS X part of your requirements?).

As an aside, an example MUA (e-mail program) which has support for glimpse is EXMH http://exmh.org/ but you do not need to use EXMH to use glimpse. glimpse is a stand-alone tool.

If you use Apple Mail, the actual mail is stored in an SQLite database, so any sql client should be able to manipulate it from the command line.

Or you could always grep the mail directory..(mind you, MS Entourage does something really weird with your mail; any ideas?)

Have you looked at MailSteward (http://www.mailsteward.com/)? I haven't tried it myself, but it claims to do about what you want, and has been weel reviewed.

Ian, that looks fine.

In my experience, MailSteward works well when Spotlight isn't enough.

Mail.app will support Exchange in Leopard (10.5). So, you could wait a month, then switch over to Apple Mail.

Scratch that. Looks like 10.4 has the same feature.

Devon Think is not just for Mail but it might do what you want. Go to Devon Technologies website, http://www.devon-technologies.com/ The software has some AI built in and after a while, it has gathered enough information to catagorize things on its own. It might be overkill but you could also use it for PDF files and combined with Devon Agent, it makes a great information management tool.

What's wrong with Spotlight?

Spotlight consists of several parts: the main ones are: an indexer, an index, a search engine and three front ends to the search engine. The index and the search engine are pretty powerful but far from perfect. They ignore certain kind of files, certain locations and certain kinds of metadata. The search engine is the best part. It has a very powerfull (but complicated) query language. The real problem is the front ends which allow for only one type of query, do not support booleans, and, with the exception of the finder's cannot restrict the search to certain types of data. As a result they typically yield far to many hits.

There are several ways out

One is to use the terminal command 'mfind' to feed your queries directly to the search engine. To do this you need to learn that query language (see this page at Apple's developer's site).

There are several alternative front ends available. I use the freeware front end NotLight. You might prefer FileSpot or HoudahSpot ($20).

In addition, there are several alternative search utilities such as EasyFind (free) and Foxtrot ($30). Yep ($30) allows you to search, view and manage all your pdfs in one convenient place.

Finally, there are some specialized information managers. I would recommend DevonThink (already mentioned above). I have used it for many years now and I am very satisfied with it (although it has a few quircks). Currently I use DevonThink Pro with comes with scripts to import your mail, but DevonThink Pro Office seems to do a better job and imports email from major email applications including formatting and attachments and integrates it with all your other documents.

Arno, thanks for that very useful information. More than just a good philosopher, hey?

Thank you all. I have bought and set up (it is humming in the background as we speak) Mailsteward. I have downloaded NotLight and EasyFind, both free and more useful to me than Spotlight. And I await with slightly bated breath Apple's next revision to Mail, which (I hope!) can handle Exchange Public Folders without choking. Bless you all, and take a raise out of petty cash.

If you use Apple Mail, the actual mail is stored in an SQLite database, so any sql client should be able to manipulate it from the command line.

Or you could always grep the mail directory..(mind you, MS Entourage does something really weird with your mail; any ideas?)

Have you looked at MailSteward (http://www.mailsteward.com/)? I haven't tried it myself, but it claims to do about what you want, and has been weel reviewed.