Search all your online accounts quickly with Cloud Magic

Although popular web-based services such as Gmail and Twitter have their own ways to find things, searching online accounts for something specific often involves flitting between multiple services. In this workshop, we’ll explore a free tool called Cloud Magic, which offers a one-stop search shop for numerous online services. As soon as you are signed up, you will be able to search all your online accounts in seconds.

Step 1

Obviously it is necessary to have accounts with services such as Gmail or Twitter before Cloud Magic can do its stuff. Start by launching a web browser and visiting Cloud Magic. When the website appears, type in a valid email address and choose a password. Then click Sign up now. At the next screen, there are a selection of services to choose from – in this screenshot, Gmail and its associated services (calendar, contacts and so on) is selected.

Step 2

At the next screen, Cloud Magic asks for the Gmail address and password associated with the account; type the details into the boxes and click the Sign in button. At the next page, Cloud Magic displays a summary of the ‘products’ associated with this Google account that it is able to index for searching; these include Google Docs, Contacts and Calendar. Cloud Magic can be used with different accounts held on the same service, so it’s possible to add more than one Gmail address or Twitter account, for example. Click the Grant access button.

Step 3

Cloud Magic opens a Google-style search page and starts indexing the content of the Google account. How long this takes to complete depends on what’s stored in the account but it’s possible to start searching straight away. Try it. Type in a search word and press Enter. Depending on where Cloud Magic finds the word, the results list will be divided into different sections. Here, for example, the first results in the list are all emails, while the bottom one is a document created in Google Docs (though that service is part of Google Drive).