Nested boolean searches?

I'm loving Entourage 2008, but I'd love it even more if I could create saved
searches that are a little more fine-grained (e.g. "(category is A OR b) AND
due date is today"). Is there any way to do this, perhaps with an
AppleScript?

Thanks,
Michael


--
I never metadata I didn't like.

Diane
Wed May 07 16:52:48 CDT 2008

"Michael Grant" wrote:

> I'm loving Entourage 2008, but I'd love it even more if I could create saved
> searches that are a little more fine-grained (e.g. "(category is A OR b) AND
> due date is today"). Is there any way to do this, perhaps with an
> AppleScript?

This should work....

Match is all criteria is met:

Category is yyy
Due Date Today

Match is all criteria is met:

Category is xxx
Due Date Today

Looking at how to combine these.... Just thinking out loud here....

What if you used a rule to move these messages by category to a folder?
(remember rules can copy message if you do not want them left in the
original location) Then you could do a search:

Match is all criteria is met:
Is in folder zzz
Due Date Today

--
Diane

Michael
Wed May 07 18:51:14 CDT 2008

On 5/7/08 4:52 PM, in article
C44772C0.1CA5D%diane@invalid.entourage.mvps.org, "Diane Ross"
<diane@invalid.entourage.mvps.org> wrote:

> "Michael Grant" wrote:
>
>> I'm loving Entourage 2008, but I'd love it even more if I could create saved
>> searches that are a little more fine-grained (e.g. "(category is A OR b) AND
>> due date is today"). Is there any way to do this, perhaps with an
>> AppleScript?
>
> This should work....
>
> Match is all criteria is met:
>
> Category is yyy
> Due Date Today
>
> Match is all criteria is met:
>
> Category is xxx
> Due Date Today
>
> Looking at how to combine these.... Just thinking out loud here....
>
> What if you used a rule to move these messages by category to a folder?
> (remember rules can copy message if you do not want them left in the
> original location) Then you could do a search:
>
> Match is all criteria is met:
> Is in folder zzz
> Due Date Today

I suppose I can first save my OR search, then use that saved search as one
of the criteria for my AND search. Not too elegant but it should work. Now
if I could organize saved searches in folders....

Michael

--
WARNING: May pre house the seamy side volitation!!!

Diane
Wed May 07 19:27:01 CDT 2008

"Michael Grant" wrote:

> I suppose I can first save my OR search, then use that saved search as one
> of the criteria for my AND search. Not too elegant but it should work. Now
> if I could organize saved searches in folders....

Good suggestion on the folders for saved searches. Send feedback on this.

Same goes for Categories. What I do when naming categories is use a naming
method like this:

Personal
Personal: Family
Personal: Phone
Personal: Medical

Not very elegant, but it works.

--
Diane

William
Wed May 07 21:14:05 CDT 2008

Diane Ross wrote:
> "Michael Grant" wrote:
>
>> I suppose I can first save my OR search, then use that saved search as one
>> of the criteria for my AND search. Not too elegant but it should work. Now
>> if I could organize saved searches in folders....
>
> Good suggestion on the folders for saved searches. Send feedback on this.
>
> Same goes for Categories. What I do when naming categories is use a naming
> method like this:
>
> Personal
> Personal: Family
> Personal: Phone
> Personal: Medical
>
> Not very elegant, but it works.

Not sure if this would be of any use to you but Entourage 2008 allows
you to used Saved Searches *within* other Saved Searches. You can get
pretty complex results from this.

The ultimate geek way of accomplishing your search, however, would be to
use the Raw Query function. This is a feature of Spotlight and is
accessible in Entourage at the bottom of the criteria drop down menu.

An example of the Raw Query you'd like to run would look like (this
should be all on one line but I'm breaking it into two to be easier to
read):

(com_microsoft_entourage_categories == "A" || "B") &&
(kMDItemDueDate == $time.today)

"==" mean "equal"
"||" means "or"
"&&" means "and"

Andy Ruff, a product manager for Entourage, wrote this article for
Spotlight support in Entourage 2004
<http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.22/22.05/Entourage2004SpotlightSupport/index.html>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

Michael
Thu May 08 13:15:09 CDT 2008

Thanks, that's just about perfect (once I learn the syntax).
Michael


On 5/7/08 9:14 PM, in article #iLOyELsIHA.484@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl, "William
Smith" <mecklists@REM0VETH1S.comcast.net> wrote:

> The ultimate geek way of accomplishing your search, however, would be to
> use the Raw Query function. This is a feature of Spotlight and is
> accessible in Entourage at the bottom of the criteria drop down menu.
>
> An example of the Raw Query you'd like to run would look like (this
> should be all on one line but I'm breaking it into two to be easier to
> read):
>
> (com_microsoft_entourage_categories == "A" || "B") &&
> (kMDItemDueDate == $time.today)
>
> "==" mean "equal"
> "||" means "or"
> "&&" means "and"
>
> Andy Ruff, a product manager for Entourage, wrote this article for
> Spotlight support in Entourage 2004
> <http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.22/22.05/Entourage2004SpotlightSu
> pport/index.html>.