How can I do a non-indexed full text search?
I am using Thunderbird 52.4.0(32-bin) on Windows 8.1.
For example, I have an email in my Inbox containing the word "deoxyribonucleic acid". Assume, I cannot remember all of it, so I try searching "nucleic" - I get zero search results. Especially in German we have a huge amount of composed nouns, so this kind of search seams not so unusual to me, but the Global Search doesn't help here. Even Searching "Deoxy" or "Deoxy*" doesn't not bring up any result.
Is there any way to to get a positive search result in those cases, from a developer point of view, doing something like a string.Contains search for all the mails in my inbox? Or maybe - is my installation broken not being able to do this?
Chosen solution
Depending upon which search method you used, the results can vary.
If you know the email is in a specific folder eg: Inbox. Then the 'Quick Filter' method will search as you require. select the Inbox to show list of emails Use the 'Quick Filter' to search on eg: nucleic you can use the 'filter messages by:' 'Body' option to narrow down further.
Cannot see the 'Quick filter Bar' ? Enable it: 'Menu icon' > 'Options' > select 'Quick Filter Bar'
Info on 'Quick filter Bar':
The 'Global Search' option can use a wildcard character *, but it seems to only work in a specific way. example - I want to find 'broadband' in text/body Search term *band will only find 'band' or 'bands' but search term broad* will find 'broad' and 'broadband'
So if using Global Search method then you need to know the start of the word. Search term: deoxy* should locate 'deoxyribonucleic'
Global search info:
There is also another method of searching.
Note: I have always needed to select an email first to get the context menu options as follows.
'Menu icon' > 'Find > 'Search Messages'
Search for messages in:
You can search on any folder or account, but not several accounts.
You can include subfolders.
If searching for one term: select 'Match all of the following'
'Body' and 'contains' and type: nucleic
click on 'Search'
A list is returned and you should get the one you are looking for somewhere in the list. You can open any email - double click to open in a tab but you can also save the results as a search folder. This means you could save those emails as folder and then perform more searching using Quick Filter on that folder.
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Chosen Solution
Depending upon which search method you used, the results can vary.
If you know the email is in a specific folder eg: Inbox. Then the 'Quick Filter' method will search as you require. select the Inbox to show list of emails Use the 'Quick Filter' to search on eg: nucleic you can use the 'filter messages by:' 'Body' option to narrow down further.
Cannot see the 'Quick filter Bar' ? Enable it: 'Menu icon' > 'Options' > select 'Quick Filter Bar'
Info on 'Quick filter Bar':
The 'Global Search' option can use a wildcard character *, but it seems to only work in a specific way. example - I want to find 'broadband' in text/body Search term *band will only find 'band' or 'bands' but search term broad* will find 'broad' and 'broadband'
So if using Global Search method then you need to know the start of the word. Search term: deoxy* should locate 'deoxyribonucleic'
Global search info:
There is also another method of searching.
Note: I have always needed to select an email first to get the context menu options as follows.
'Menu icon' > 'Find > 'Search Messages'
Search for messages in:
You can search on any folder or account, but not several accounts.
You can include subfolders.
If searching for one term: select 'Match all of the following'
'Body' and 'contains' and type: nucleic
click on 'Search'
A list is returned and you should get the one you are looking for somewhere in the list. You can open any email - double click to open in a tab but you can also save the results as a search folder. This means you could save those emails as folder and then perform more searching using Quick Filter on that folder.
If global search is all over the place then you may like to try rebuilding the Global Search database. Good info here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
Thank you very much, the Quick Filter did the trick for me.
Hi Toad Hall, are you still here?
If so, can you help me with something you describe above? I am in the Search Messages window you mention and I cant seem to get the results out of that location. That is, you say, above " . . . you can also save the results as a search folder. This means you could save those emails as folder and then perform more searching using Quick Filter on that folder."
But when I saved as a search folder, it didn't save the results, it just saved the search criteria. So when I go to that search folder, it is empty and just starts re-running the search. That would be fine if it was a quick search, but it took hours and hours to run. So do you know how can I copy or export the results of the search, not just the search itself?
Thanks!