diff --git a/config.php.in b/config.php.in
index 146b2d18..6eb8e6c1 100644
--- a/config.php.in
+++ b/config.php.in
@@ -239,6 +239,7 @@ $config['SPHINX_ATTACHMENT_INDEX'] = 'att1';
 $config['SPHINX_TAG_INDEX'] = 'tag1';
 $config['SPHINX_NOTE_INDEX'] = 'note1';
 $config['SPHINX_STRICT_SCHEMA'] = 1;
+$config['MAX_EMAIL_LEN'] = 41;
 
 $config['RELOAD_COMMAND'] = 'sudo -n /etc/init.d/rc.piler reload';
 $config['PILERIMPORT_IMAP_COMMAND'] = '/usr/local/bin/pilerimport -d /var/piler/imap -q -r';
diff --git a/webui/system/misc.php b/webui/system/misc.php
index 0b516085..0056eaa1 100644
--- a/webui/system/misc.php
+++ b/webui/system/misc.php
@@ -142,6 +142,16 @@ function checkemail($email, $domains) {
 function validemail($email = '') {
    if($email == '') { return 0; }
 
+   // sphinxsearch supports tokens up to 41 characters long
+   // If there's a longer token in the query, then sphinx
+   // reports a query error even if the query is itself correct
+   // So the workaround is to get rid of these email addresses
+   if(strlen($email) > MAX_EMAIL_LEN) {
+      $msg = sprintf("discarding email %s: longer than %d", $email, MAX_EMAIL_LEN);
+      syslog(LOG_INFO, $msg);
+      return 0;
+   }
+
    if(preg_match("/@local$/", $email)) { return 1; }
 
    if(preg_match('/^[_a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\.[_a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-zA-Z]{2,10})$/', $email)) {