Hey Thunderbird has a well-functioning Search function that uses the cache (or rather, what the background search process/function "read" and saved in global-messages-db.sqlite). With a newly configured account (IMAP), it works like this: - establishes the directory tree - downloads message titles (including sender, date, etc.) - *.msf summary files - then a process that downloads the entire message for local storage - in the background, an indexing process (GLODA?) starts, which creates a search database (subject, from, to, keywords in the message body) using the global-messages-db.sqlite file. For very large mailboxes (>100k msg, ~50GB), this means that the server's content is transferred to the local disk (and stored in ImapMail). The question is: how do I configure TB to run in "thin" mode, meaning after connecting a new account: - establish a directory tree - download message titles (including sender, date, etc.) -> *.msf - DO NOT download messages for local storage - start the indexing process, which will download and index the subject, from, to, and keywords in the message body (it will download and "read" the message, but not save it locally) and save it to global-messages-db.sqlite Setting "mail.server.default.offline_download" to "false" will cause this behavior, but the message body will not be indexed (only from, to, and subject). I tried to work around this by: - configuring the mailbox with the download option for offline use - waiting for it to download - setting "mail.server.default.offline_download" to "false" - deleting all "cur" directories (I use maildir) or deleting all *.eml files from the ImapMail directory. Content search works for messages that have been downloaded (and indexed) previously; it doesn't work for new messages. Why am I trying this? Some people have "air" laptops (meaning - weaker processors, small SSDs) and need access to email (via IMAP), including full search, without having all their email downloaded locally. In other words, how can I configure TB via IMAP to: - download the directory and subdirectory tree - download the headers of all messages - "read" and index all messages (including their content) and store them in "global-messages-db.sqlite," but not store all messages locally (online mode only)? Regards Chris