Bizarrely, one cannot make OR queries in Microsoft Outlook for Mac, at least not easily.
For example, I want a smart folder that contains all messages tagged with either the FIS Broker category or the Dubletten category.
The way to do it non-easily is to select Raw Query as the query rule type (in Search > Advanced), and then enter a Spotlight query string.
The attribute to query for categories is com_microsoft_outlook_categories.
That attribute takes a numeric id - but what the hell is the id for a category like FIS Broker?
Outlook doesn't tell me, so I have to go even deeper down the rabbit hole.
Here is how:
- Tag a message with a sufficiently unique message title with the categories you're interested in (e.g.,
FIS BrokerandDubletten). - On the commandline, navigate to the folder that contains the raw MS Outlook messages:
$ cd ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile/Data/Messages
- Grep for the title of the message to find the file that contains it:
$ grep -r -i "A sufficiently unique message title" ./*
Binary file ./11/0B2132B7-999F-4114-AC6C-E93DE72CEF9A.olk15Message matches
Binary file ./156/9C6C3E09-C2A3-42CE-A5EF-CEAB70865FC5.olk15Message matches
- Now run the
mdlscommand on that file to find the attached Spotlight metadata:
$ mdls ./11/0B2132B7-999F-4114-AC6C-E93DE72CEF9A.olk15Message
- You'll get a long list of metadata. For our
com_microsoft_outlook_categoriesattribute we get something like:
com_microsoft_outlook_categories = (
87,
86
)
- So there we have our category ids!
- Finally, the raw Spotlight query to match all messages tagged with either one of these categories and put them in a smart folder is:
com_microsoft_outlook_categories == 86 || com_microsoft_outlook_categories == 87
Sources: