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Search runs one query against four different things at once and groups what comes back. One search query runs against messages, conversations, contacts and help centre articles at once. One search query runs against messages, conversations, contacts and help centre articles at once.

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What each one matches

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the text of what was said
Matches the content of messages. This is the slowest and most restricted of the four, and the one people misjudge most often — see the three-month limit below.
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the thread, by who it is with
Matches the conversation’s own display number, and the contact’s name, email address, phone number or external identifier. It does not look inside the messages — that is what the messages results are for.
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the person, not the thread
Matches name, email, phone number or identifier, across the whole account — but only among contacts that have a non-empty email, phone number or identifier. A name-only contact, such as an unidentified web visitor, never appears here, no matter how you type the name.
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your whole help centre, any status
Matches help centre articles with no status scope — a draft or an archived article is just as searchable here as a published one. Worth remembering as a reason to be careful what you leave sitting in draft: it’s findable long before it’s meant to be customer-facing.

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The two limits

Message search only covers the last three months. A conversation from last year is still findable by contact name, email or conversation number — but not by anything that was said in it. If you are searching for a phrase and getting nothing, this is almost always why.
You see results from the inboxes you have access to. Conversation and message results are scoped to your own inboxes; administrators see every inbox in the account. Contacts and articles are account-wide for everyone.
Each group returns fifteen results at a time.

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Getting a better result

  • Search by phone number or email rather than name. Names are entered inconsistently by customers and imported inconsistently by systems; a phone number is a phone number.
  • If you know roughly when, use a view instead. Filters beat search for “everything from this inbox, last week, still open” — search is for when you know what, not when.
  • Quote the exact phrase you remember. Message search matches the content you type; a half-remembered paraphrase will not find it.

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Next

Conversation views

Filters and saved views — better than search for anything time-shaped.

Working together

Participants, mentions, private notes and snooze.

Labels

The thing that makes conversations findable a year later.

Contacts

Searching people rather than threads.