Thunderbird Community Forum

I am using Thunderbird 128.7.1 on Windows, have several mailboxes (POP and Imap) with many sub-folders and large email archives (~20 years of emails) under "Local Folders". Indexing used to work fine over all those folders and I liked it a lot, in particular the timeline view on global searches.

Now, since a while (not sure for how long) indexing only looks into all my "Sent" folders, and not any of the incoming folders or local folders. I see that in all the global searches I try now. Note, whenever I archive a large amount of emails, I delete global-messages-db.sqlite and re-start TB to make sure the index gets re-built to match the real folder content. Previously global-messages-db.sqlite had a few GB in size, not it does not get larger than ~100MB.

How can I tell TB to index all folders as it used to do?

It does not appear in the message search. Perhaps the emails of a particular account are not included in the search, but is there a way to address this? I have already rebuilt the “global search database”.

Ever since I updated to Thunderbird ver 128.4.2 esr, I can no longer do a global search by electing to search "Local Folders" and include all subfolders in the search. For example, as a test case, if I search for all messages dated after 1/1/2024, no messages in my "Inbox" folder are listed. It is true that of the 20 or so subfolders of "Local Folders", there is one subfolder named "Misc". Messages in "Misc" and its subfolders that meet the 1/1/2024 test criterion are found and listed, but other subfolders of "Local Folders" are ignored. Instead, the search engine remains hung in a "....Searching" state until I manually close the search.

But also ... if I choose to explicitly name any one of the subfolders of "Local Folders" as the root folder of a search (and "include all subfolders" contained in that root, the test case above finds all messages in the named subfolder and it's subordinate subfolders.

Bottom line ... I have a lot of subfolders and sometimes I've forgotten where I have stored a particular message. In a pile of messages decades deep, this problem has become a major disability. Someone please help!

Some facts that might be important.

I had hoped the problem might go away with subsequent Thunderbird updates. I've updated my mac to TBird 128.5.2esr now: but I still have the problem

I'm still running the latest version of Big_Sur on my mac. (I don't have this problem on a laptop that's running a later version of MacOS)

I have a lot of filters that automatically move incoming messages to my myriad of subfolders. The filter engine appears to continue to work correctly implying that, the filter engine knows how to find all of the subfolders of "Local Folders" even though the search engine doesn't.

Witajcie,

Proszę o pomoc z wyszukiwarką w programie Thunderbird 128.9.2esr (64 bity). Do tej pory wyszukiwarka działała poprawnie. Teraz gdy próbuje wyszukać jakieś hasło to wyszukiwarka pokazuje mi wyniki tylko od października 2024 do marca 2005 roku a wiadomości w folderach mam od 2020 roku. W ustawieniach pole Indeksowanie wiadomości i wyszukiwanie mam zaznaczone. Próbowałem odznaczyć i uruchomić program ponownie. Uruchamiałem też Thunderbird w trybie rozwiązywania problemów. Żadne z tych działań nie rozwiązało problemu. Jak wejdę w foldery na koncie to normalnie widzę wszystkie wiadomości od 2020 roku ale wyszukiwarka nie wyszukuje w wiadomościach przed 2024 rokiem. Co dokładnie powinienem zrobić aby to naprawić? Dziękuję za pomoc Pozdrawiam Marcin

I don't like the NEW Thunderbird, especially the Search function which is very frustrating and difficult to work if it works at all. the old one was much better where we could indicate filter elements and retrieve the emails we wanted! Is there some magic or secret methods to make this NEW one work?

I'm using Thunderbird on a MacBook Pro with multiple M365 and Google Workspace accounts. I have created two Saved Searches, which are in Favorites Folders and perform as intended (one searching multiple email addresses across multiple Inboxes). A third search has been created several times and keeps disappearing. It searches for all Inbox email across 3 accounts and searches for 6 different emails (To: or cc:). This third search is actually where I spend most of my day, so it's important to me. Any thoughts???

Thanks in advance.

I'd like my search results to include messages where the search item is in the Sender or Subject but it appears to find only words in the body. Is there a way to include this? btw, the window pane on the left shows a filter but I don't know how it got there or how to delete it. Is this relevant? Is there documentation on how to use the search feature to specify folders, binary searches, etc? Thanks

Hello, I’m using the latest version of Thunderbird. The Ctrl-Shift-F search does not offers me the option of searching in the message Body when searching the Deleted folder, although it is fine when searching in the Inbox. I have tried restarting Thunderbird to no effect. What is going on? Alan.

When I search for emails and click on a message from the search results, I receive an error message saying “Email not found”, and the email body does not appear. However, if I open the same email directly from the Inbox without using the search function, the email content is displayed correctly. I would like to be able to view the email body from the search results as well. Are there any known causes or possible solutions for this issue?

Prerequisite: This concerns behavior after migrating Thunderbird email data from an old device to a Windows 11 PC. Currently, I am only using Thunderbird for viewing emails.

Use case:

10 email address UNIFIED inbox 20 emails: 4 read and/or favorite and/or tagged and/or with attachment 16 NOT (the opposite)

Need to select all one which are not favorites - > they have to be archived

With Quick select there is a way to select all that has 1 or more attribute

BUT there is no way to select those which have NOT 1 or more attribute (the inverse)

The mails list can't be sorted to attribute values, attribute NEGATIVE values

Is there a way to do it?

If not: It might be quite insane logically not let the user to filter mails WITHOUT a certain attribute. There should be a button with the possibility to invert the list. Or something like that. Shift-click on quick selection buttons which negate a filter. ??? Filtering/searching means: not relevant, "relevant: Yes", "relevant: No". Today "relevant: No" is not implemented Email workflows (archiving, ...........) use NOT favorite, NOT tagged etc selections: I want to archive everything except those which are favorites, which are tagged etc.

Search is not finding emails that I can see are there. I looked at "Rebuilding the Global Database does not complete (Mac)" and although I use Windows, I followed the hint to look at the Activity Manager and the Error Console after an attempt to re-index failed to complete. The Activity Manager showed "Indexing 429 of 5663 messages in Sent - horshamquakermeeting@phonecoop.coop (IMAP) (7% complete)" The Error Console showed "1764413544692 addons.xpi WARN Checking C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\distribution\extensions for addons" I used Windows Explorer to look for addons.xpi on the whole of the C: drive. Not only is there not such a file but C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\distribution does not have an extensions folder. Also I have previously looked in C:\Users\Michael\AppData\Roaming rather than C:\Program Files (x86) to find Thunderbird files. Thunderbird is otherwise behaving well, just that I can't search for emails. I may have deleted too many files earlier when I was trying to remove an addon that I didn't want. How do I get back to normal?

I've been doing this for (literally) decades.

If I initiate a search in all local folders, for example all messages to, from, cc or bcc a particular e-mail address, the results (as of about a week ago) now ONLY return messages found in Inbox or Trash. Also, after returning those results, the search indictor continues to 'spin' as if it's not done but still searching. None of the messages in my Sent folder appear in the results.

If I change my search to specifically look in the Sent folder, I get all the remaining messages I'm looking for. But it isn't helpful to have to perform two separate searches to get these two separate result sets.

I've tried quite a few things. Any ideas?

The subject says it all: command-shift-F [Search Messages (advanced search in folder)] no longer works for me in 141.0 on Mac. Does anyone else have this problem, and if so, how to fix it?

Thanks

John Anderson

How can I filter the list of emails in a folder? There's this 'Ctrl-K' search box but does nothing like I want. I just want to filter the displayed list of emails by correspondent. The Ctrl-K system is a baffling mystery, AFAICT you always get a search for 'mentioning' of the search string, whereas a filter for correspondent would be useful too.

Hi all,

Notice that any search via email address or key word in upper search box for emails in 2025 returns nothing. 2024 and past emails in search are there. Rebuild the Global Database https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database and deleted global-messages-db.sqlite as instructed.

Problem not solved and global-messages-db.sqlite was not recreated in the profiles folder. Just took a global-messages-db.sqlite from a back up and put it in profiles to see if this helps. Also repairing one of my accounts to see if that helps.

Anyone know what is going on? I see several other posts about folks having similar problems in search and indexing. Running window 11 and TB 128.6.0esr (64-bit).

Also notice 2 stable extension are now non functional.

Provider for Google Calendar true 128.0.0 128.0.0 133.* Allows bidirectional access to Google Calendar

AI Grammar Checker & Paraphraser – LanguageTool true 8.11.2 8.11.2 136.* Instantly Enhance Your Texts with LanguageTool’s Grammar Checker and Paraphrasing Tool

Thanks for any insights -- jim

When I search for a name in Thunderbird mail e.g Lennart, nothing from 2026 comes up, only older mails from 2025-12-31 and backwards. if I search on his e-mailadress, e.g l.name@ppost.se it finds avery mail. What is wrong?

On doing a search for mail ... it returns a number of mails ..... but many of them when I click on the entry it comes up with 'no message found'

Is there some index I need to rebuild or similar ?