Indexing my Vista Mail

Perceptive Search indexes the messages stored in Windows Mail, the built-in email client in Microsoft Vista.

Requirements

• Microsoft Windows Mail (supplied with Vista) or Windows Live Mail

Indexing my personal information

The Perceptive Search indexing wizard allows you to easily create indexes of personal information including Emails and My Desktop. See Indexing my personal information  for details.

Adding Windows Mail emails to an existing index

If you have an existing index and would like to add Windows Mail emails, follow these steps:

1. Start Perceptive Enterprise Search - Local Administration Console
2. Open the index you wish to modify. You can do this by either:
   • Selecting it from the My Index Catalog list; or
   • Select File > Open an Index from the menu and on the Disk Directory tab, browse to the folder where the index is stored
3. From the menu, select Index > Content Sources. The indexing rules for this index will be shown.
4. From the list on the left hand side, select Email Rules.
5. On the toolbar, click the New Rule button.
6. Click Windows Vista/Live Mail.
7. You will be presented with a folder list similar to that shown in Windows Mail. If you want to index all items, simply click the Select All button, or you can select individual folders to include or exclude from the index by clicking on the button to the left of each folder. See Email Indexing Rules for more information about defining advanced email rules.
   
   If you wish to index email attachments, tick the Index attachments as well as email contents check box.
8. Click Finish to create the rule.
9. Now that the email rule has been created, you must Update the index to have the items referenced by the new rule added to the index. Close the Indexing Rules window and select Index > Update from the menu.  If a message tells you that the index is in use, click the Clear button on the toolbar before trying again. See Updating your index for further details.

Modifying Windows Mail indexing rules

To modify existing Windows Mail indexing rules, follow these steps:

1. Start Perceptive Enterprise Search - Local Administration Console
2. Open the index you wish to modify. You can do this by either:
   • Selecting it from the My Index Catalog list; or
   • Select File > Open an Index from the menu and on the Disk Directory tab, browse to the folder where the index is stored
3. From the menu, select Index > Content Sources. The indexing rules for this index will be shown.
4. From the list on the left hand side, select Email Rules.
5. Select the rule you wish to edit. It will have an Email System of WINMAIL, with the mailbox folder as the description. Click the Edit Rule button on the toolbar.
6. You will be presented with a folder list similar to that shown in Windows Mail. If you want to index all items, simply click the Select All button, or you can select individual folders to include or exclude from the index by clicking on the button to the left of each folder. See Email Indexing Rules for more information about defining advanced email rules.
   
   If you wish to index email attachments, tick the Index attachments as well as email contents check box.
7. Click Finish to save the rule.
8. Now that the email rule has been changed, you must Update the index to have the change reflected in the index. Close the Indexing Rules window and select Index > Update from the menu. If a message tells you that the index is in use, click the Clear button on the toolbar before trying again. See Updating your index for details.

Note that Windows Mail emails saved to disk as .eml files are indexed using File Rules instead of Email Rules.