Thunderbird Community Forum

Some customized search criteria work as expected, e.g. Content-Type, Message-ID, In-Reply-To, ...

Some not: Content-Transfer-Encoding, Content-Disposition

Some may appear more than once, e.g. Content-Type.

Searching for contents of such criteria / tags yields no results.

How to customize search for these criteria properly?

Below is a shortened source / example addressing all of these issues:

X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------3TP0..." Message-ID: <123456789...@example.mail> Date: Mon, 01 Jan 20... 12:00:00... MIME-Version: 1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird From: "from@example.mail" <from@example.mail> Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?MusterSubject?= To: "MusterTo" <to@example.mail> References: <...@....eurprd06.prod.outlook.com>

<...@....EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>
<...@....EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

Autocrypt: addr=from@example.mail; keydata=

xsDNBGN2t...==

In-Reply-To: <...@....EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Sir or Madam ...

Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document; name="=?UTF-8?Q?example=2Edocx?=" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename*0*=UTF-8' '%4...; filename*1*=%7...; filename*2*=%7... Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

UEsDBBQA...

Related threads/questions/keywords: filter, search, criteria, custom, message, body, header, tags, global

Best I could find: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1475007 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-saved-searches https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/getting-started-thunderbird-main-window-supernova

The Global Search feature is okay (when it works). Problem is that it doesn't work reliably. For example, I have a plain text email in my inbox from a few days ago with some content in the message body "view your paycheck". Just a random example. I would expect this message to show up in the global search results when I type in the phrase "view your paycheck". It does not.

If I use the classic search function "Search Messages" (which as far as I can tell is only accessible by right clicking on an account or folder), the results are as expected.

I've already tried repairing the folder or deleting the database file. Those are workarounds that treat the symptom, but don't cure the problem permanently. It may 'solve' the issue for a while, but the problem always returns. I can't trust the Global Search results.

On the other hand, the classic search is flawless. It's even more reliable now that I have IMAP server doing service side indexing with Apache Solr.

My question is, can we have the Global Search configured to instead send the query to the server just like the option currently present in classic search?

Or at the very least, make an option so that classic search is a first class citizen instead of the global search.

I entered a word into (Macintosh) Thunderbird's search box and it displayed 47 messages that contain text matching that word. I deleted the word from the search box and it still only displays those 47 messages. These are from three email accounts that I have, and all messages are displayed when I select any of those three individually. I did the search for messages in the Unified Folders inbox, and it is that inbox that only displays 47 messages.

I did an online search for what to do about this and the advice I got was to quit and restart Thunderbird, which didn't work, and to run the Tools->Search Tools->Rebuild Global Database command, but my version of Thunderbird doesn't have a command named Search Tools in its Tools menu. What else can I do?

I'm trying to understand why the Quick Search (which I use all the time and is generally *amazing*) is not working for one specific email. The sender is "Marlene Hulda". I have attached the following screenshots:

1. A screenshot of my Inbox showing the email, along with a few others 2. A search using the word "Marlene". That search results in "no message found". 3. A search using the word "Hulda". That search results in "no message found". 4. A search using the word "welcome". In this case, it does find the email.

Any suggestions on why it cannot find the email in step 2 or step 3?

Thanks for your help.

Even started in safe-mode Thunderbird 128.6.0esr (64-bit) Linux Quick-Filter doesn't filter newsgroup NNTP messages when the searches is performed on the "Body" of the messages. Works for searches in the "Subject" field, but not whether also "Body" is selected. The search in the "Body" works for regular Emails, the issue seems related only for newsgroup NNTP account messages. Please could you help me? Should I submit a bug report?

Is there any hope for us to have syntax which allows for advanced search through all the folders of a different account? Something that allows powerusers to type something like: "from:XXX to:YYY subject:"foo" after:20d" and get results?

I'm currently parsing all my email with notmuch locally to get something like this. It would be great to be able to get this type of functionality in Thunderbird natively. There are some adons that I have found but they seem like hacks; search needs to be super reliable.

• Apologies if this is has been asked before!

Thunderbird updated and while the expression search bar is there, and you can click in it, typing doesn't do anything and TYPING THE LETTER A DELETES THE LATEST EMAIL !!!!! If you keep tapping letter "A" you keep DELETING EMAILS !!!! AND THEY ARE NOT IN THE SPAM FOLDER !!!

Hi All,

Just wondering what the roadmap is for multisearch functionality?

I might be a bit dim, but how do you actually search the support forums, as I suspect that this question has been asked before. There are no results returned for multisearch or RFC 7377 or ESEARCH.

Also is it possible to return search results as a vertical list instead of tiled responses, there's a reason why google doesn't do this.

my version of Thunderbird is 128.9.1esr and since this update, I cannot conduct a functional search. If I search an email I know is in my sent or inbox it cannot find it or if finds only 1 email from a few days ago.

Hi How can I Select all emails from a sender. I'm looking for a similar functionality to Outlook where you right-click on an email > "Select all messages from this sender" so I can move them out, delete them, or do whatever.

It looks like this is missing from your application. If I can't use it, I have no other reason to use TB.

Thank you B

Thunderbird 147.0.1 (aarch64, macos, m2)

Team, After spending many many hours creating 14 search-folders that can find all of the right emails in approx. 20 "real" (local) folders.

Then I renamed 10 local folders and noticed my searchfolders disappearing!?

Big panic. Now, only the last 2 created searchfolders where there. The rest was gone. Realizing that the searchfolder config is in a file called "VirtualFolders.dat" I instantly took a copy. Restart Thunderbird: Now only 1 searchfolder was left. The copied virtualfolders.dat file still had 2 searchfolders in it but the rest is gone. There is no other copy/backup of this file.

These search folders are the only thing that generated some sense in gigantic piles of email.

Does renaming local folders KILL Virtual/Search folders?

Often times, when performing a search in Thunderbird, the pointer in the message index (ie: your INBOX) will be updated downward (if you have a lot of messages, like I do). You have to manually scroll back to the top after -- but would it make sense to just have a button that does this, that brings your pointer back to message 1 in the view index (however you have it sorted) and updates the view accordingly?

Basically, press the button and you're back to the beginning of the message index.

How do you create Message Filters (under the same account, of course) for separate folders with only some enabled? ... Rather like a Saved Search, but able to perform actions on the messages matching the filter. Thank You.

Since the last update, I am now on

 140.0.1esr (64-bit)

the search on multiple folders is never ending. The search ends quickly if on a single folder or a set of subfolders but never ends if on the parent folder.

It can go for hours and while it can find the emails I am looking for, the Search button becomes a permanent "Stop" and the task says "Searching" and the blue bar is dynamically changing trying to impart the suggestion that something is happening.

This bug did not feature on the previous "esr" version and wondering if perhaps there ought to be a further version, perhaps "eesr" for those who crave stability.

I am searching for an email to a certain person. When I search for messages in my main folder, with the "search subfolders" checked, it searches my inbox, but it does not search my sent box. I tried rebuilding the database, but that did not fix it. What should i try?

Whenever I search for a word in emails that I have in my mailboxes, Thunderbird displays the underlying HTML code of emails, rather than their formatted form. When I click on one of these, it displays correctly, i.e., formatted. This is very annoying, as the HTML can be quite long. See attachment of beginning of result for searching the word "libération".