How to Search Email File Attachments

Search common email file attachments with MailDex

MailDex by Encryptomatic LLC is a Windows software application that indexes email content, including Outlook PST, OST, MSG and MBOX, EML email files. People use MailDex to search and organize email content. It can also be used to export email content to different text formats (txt, html, csv) and image formats like PDF, GIF, JPG, TIF, etc.

A popular use for MailDex is to search within some email file attachments for a match to a text string.

To follow along with this tutorial, download a 15 day free trial of MailDex.

MailDex download page and installer.
Download the MailDex installer for a 15 day free trial.

After installing MailDex, you will need to create a MailDex project. You can have as many projects as you like, and projects can be created or deleted as necessary.

Projects make it easy for you to organize email content. For example, if you ware working on three different legal cases, you would want to keep email content separate and unmingled. In this case, create three different projects, and delete them when your work is completed.

After creating a project, you can add email content to it. MailDex begins indexing email content as soon as you add it to a project. Indexing usually doesn’t take very long. MailDex generally indexes at a rate of about 12,000 emails per minute, however the time will vary depending on whether emails are text, html, rich text, and whether there are parts of the email that are hosted remotely.

Import Emails and Create a MailDex Indexing Project.

When MailDex has finished indexing your emails, you can begin to search them by going to the “Mail” tab.

The simplest way to search email for a string is to type in in the search box.

Quick search box on the MailDex “Search” tab

Simple search will look for your search term in the text of the emails. To search for text inside of email file attachments requires Advanced Search.

Click the “Advanced Search” icon from the MailDex search tab.

Here is where you can build complex searches based on a number of different matching or exclusionary criteria. You can also specify the content that MailDex will search, such as subject or sender fields, date ranges, matching AND or OR, and file attachment name, or file attachment content.

Searching email file attachment content

Save your Advanced Search settings for future use. Click “Find” and MailDex will search your email file attachments. Any hits on your search will appear in the email list.

If you have any questions about searching email file attachments with MailDex, please post them in the comments or use live chat on this web page to reach our support team. You can also call us directly by phone at +1-701-566-6731 x1

Happy searching!