Question

I use Outlook 2007, and I have ordered my mails so that the most recent ones are on top (the default configuration).

Whenever I search for anything, the search results are displayed in the correct order, but the oldest mails are found first.

Just to explain what I am saying, suppose these are the mails in my inbox:

mail find_in_search 1
mail find_in_search 2
mail find_in_search 3
mail find_not 1
mail find_not 2
mail find_in_search 4
mail find_not 3

When I search for find_in_search, the results appear like this:

• after 0.5s

  mail find_in_search 4
  

• after 1.0s

  mail find_in_search 3
  mail find_in_search 4
  

• after 2.0s

  mail find_in_search 1
  mail find_in_search 2
  mail find_in_search 3
  mail find_in_search 4
  

Once I have a large number of mails in my search results, I have to wait for too long before getting the right result, even though most of the times I am trying to search for mails about a couple of days back.

I have observed the same behaviour with Mozilla Thunderbird.

So, what I want to know is – Is it algorithmically harder to search the emails in order of newest first for email clients in some way , than to do it in a less useful oldest first order?

Answer 1

Mail(s) is appending,
logically oldest come first as search is done sequentially.

If the algorithm search from last to first,
any new incoming mails in between the search would not included in the search,
as the pointer cursor is passed.