After some further testing, it seems that the Normal search completion time is directly linked to the Advanced search completion time and to the size of the mailbox. What I mean is that if:
- there are 3 users, each with an Inbox or another folder with 1000 items
- the 3 users have different mailbox sizes (5GB, 15GB, 50 GB)
Then:
- when the user with a 5GB mailbox performs either a Normal search in the folder with 1000 mails or an Advanced search for his whole mailbox, then results will be returned in the same time (~5 - 10 seconds)
- when the user with a 15GB mailbox performs either a Normal search in the folder with 1000 mails or an Advanced search for his whole mailbox, then results will be returned in the same time (~20 - 45 seconds)
- when the user with a 50GB mailbox performs either a Normal search in the folder with 1000 mails or an Advanced search for his whole mailbox, then results will be returned in the same time (1 - 2 minutes)
This would make one believe that the Normal and Advanced searches actually are one and the same, with the Normal search traversing the whole mailbox, then only returning results from the current folder, whereas the Advanced search does the same and returns results from the whole mailbox / all folders.
Can we get back the old behavior where searching in a folder was almost instantaneous even with 2-3000 mails in a folder? Hopefully this could be achieved without making the Advanced search take longer.