1. A distributed mail system, comprising: a plurality of client computers for connecting to a network, each client computer configured for executing client mail application programs; a mail service system connected to the network for executing server mail programs on server computers, the mail service system including an index server for storing mail messages in message files, and for storing a full-text index of the mail messages; and means for accessing the mail messages by the plurality of client computers by searching the full-text index using queries.