You ask; the assistant chooses how to look through your Opensolr Index, the way a person uses a search engine, and picks a different way for a different kind of question.
01 · The ways it looks
- By meaning. For questions in natural language and for topics, it searches by words and meaning together, so the mail is found even when it says it in other words.
- By the exact words. For names, addresses, company names, order, invoice and tracking numbers, codes and phrases in quotes, it searches by the exact words only, with no meaning mixed in.
- The latest one. For “the last”, “the latest”, “the newest” or “the most recent” something, or what came lately about it, it searches by words and meaning, as for any question, with recent mail boosted. The mails that match stay the ones it answers from, and among them the recent ones rise. It never simply takes the newest mail in your inbox.
- The one before, or after. “And the one before it?”, “the previous one”, “the next one”: it runs the same search again, cut at the date of the mail it gave you, before it or after it.
- Lists, with no search words. By sender, period, unread, flagged or with attachments, newest first: “what came today”, “unread mail from …”. A list is the only thing put in order by date, because with no search words there is nothing else to order by.
- A whole conversation. When the answer needs more than the search returned, it reads the conversation: its newest 20 messages, each with its text, its attachments and the text read from those attachments.
- Several searches at once. A question with several parts gets several searches, run together.
02 · Which mail it reads
- Only the mail of the accounts signed in on this phone.
- All your folders, always. Every search looks in every folder, Trash and Junk included, and the answer says the folder of each mail it gives you, with its date and its sender.
- One folder only for a list, and only when you ask for the mail of that folder by its name: “what is in Archive”.
- Several mails to choose from. Each search brings back at least 5 mails and at most 10, one per conversation, and the answer uses the ones that answer your question.
03 · Names written another way
- A sender written differently. When no sender is written the way you wrote the name, it looks for the name among the words of your mail instead.
- No mail with the exact words. A search by the exact words that finds nothing is run again by meaning.
- Still nothing. It tries once more with other words, a company name written joined or apart, and when that finds nothing either, it says there is no such mail.
04 · Your own addresses
- The addresses of the accounts on this phone are yours: mail from them is mail you sent, mail to them is mail you received.
- Your own address is never taken as the sender of the mail you are looking for, so a question about mail you received is not narrowed to yourself.
- Mail you sent, “what did I send to …”, is found in Sent or among the mail from one of your addresses.
05 · Periods in your question
Today, yesterday, the last 7 days, last week, the past month, the last 3 months, in March, in 2025, since May: a period in your question becomes the days it means, counted from today’s date in your phone’s time zone, on every kind of search, the latest one and lists included.
06 · What counts most
Words in the subject weigh most, then words in the body. Words in the text read from attachments count like words in the body. The same holds in Search. When it looks for the latest one, recent mail is boosted on top of that.
07 · Your own settings
- Your AI instructions, the Instructions for the AI answer set on the search screen, are added to the assistant’s rules.
- The balance between words and meaning you set for Search. See Switches, operators and dates.
- Lexical matching: Flexible, Balanced or Strict, as in Search.