Thunderbird Community Forum

Hi all,

I'm desperately hoping someone can help me fix this so I don't have to dump Thunderbird for a different email client.

I have an email account hosted by some hosting company on a domain I own.

I noticed that Thunderbird was not returning certain emails when I searched for them. I searched, and found articles telling me to rebuild GloDa, so I followed the instructions to do that and quit Thunderbird and deleted the file. When I re-opened Thunderbird it started the re-indexing process, which I was viewing in the Activity Manager tool.

... except it only indexed a couple of the folders in my email account. It didn't index my archives, trash, spam, etc. It basically only archived the inbox and sent folders. I can see that from the list of completed tasks in the Activity Manager.

I've read on Mozilla's pages that Thunderbird indexes all folders, but it did not in my case, and as a result search is only returning a tiny proportion of my emails.

I need to be able to accurately track communications with my customers, so obviously if I can't get this fixed I'll have to move to a different email client.

I would greatly appreciate any help anyone can provide.

I have a lot of emails stored in different local folders. My search now hang. They go so far than just hang. Is there a way to rebuild the complete indexing for my thunderbird install?

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?

Hi,

I use the quick filter option very often. I use this to filter my message list by sender I'm a bit "tired" of constantly copying the sender e-mail address -> then pasting it into the quick filter field.

I am looking for an option like "Quick filter by this sender" or something like that Does anyone know how i can achieve this?

Some years ago there was an excellent extension from trusted contributor alta8888 called TotalQuickFilter (https://bitbucket.org/alta8888/totalquickfilter/wiki/Home) but unfortunately it was discontinued

In a newsgroup I have a message containing the word 'werewolf' in its body. If I do a control-K search for 'werewolf' I see 'No messages match your search'. In the left of the display I also see 'Filters From Me (0) To Me (0). I don't know what this means and I don't know why the search couldn't find a message containing 'werewolf'. If I do a control-shift-K search and select the 'Body' button I see 'No message found'. The control-shift-F search will not look in message bodies. Why can't I find the message that contains the word 'werewolf'? What am I missing? Alan.

Whenever I try to search my various emails for some text, at least 40% of the time it shows me the attached message. I'm on Version 149.0.1 but it's been happening ever since I installed Thunderbird (maybe 4 or 5 months ago?) My first move is to check that I haven't mis-spelled the word I'm looking for (which I usually haven't) and I definitely know that the word is valid for one or more emails. So why does this message keep appearing?

Previously I'd been running an old 32-bit version of Thunderbird (which I don't have installed any more) but I don't remember ever seeing this with the older version.

Hi, Thunderbird search as we know is and always has been megabroken. I search for "4.91" and it does not find anything even though there are e-mails with that string in subject and body.

Isn't it about time to fix it?

I have a search saved as a folder. I use it on my Gmail many times a day and have for a long time. But in the past week or two it has started disappearing. I recreate it and it disappears again a few days later. Any idea what I can do about this?

Win11 140.9.0esr-bb20 (64-bit)

Hi,

Can you please have a look at the following problem: I decided to re-index my mails. after I realized that the search results did structurally not contain any messages from 2026. I deleted the global-messages-db.sqlite. However, this did not lead to the desired result. After processing some folders, I can see in Activity Manager that the indexing stands still after having processed about 20% of the "Sent Mail" folder of a gmail account. I waited more than 12 hours, but the number of indexed messages did not increase. The file size of the global-messages-db.sqlite at this moment is only 2.3 KB, while the original database was more that 300 MB large.

I already tried the following without success:

1. restarted TB
2. deleted the database for the second time
3. restarted my PC
4. repaired said "Sent Mail" folder

I am running Thunderbird 140.9.0esr on Windows 11.

Many thanks in advance for your replies.

Thomas

Starting with Thunderbird 149, the Find command (Ctrl+F) no longer reports the number of matches; nor which match you're on, like "3 of 8 matches". I really miss that feature; please bring it back.

I have a folder that is set (via a quick-filter) to show only unread emails. Now when i mark an email as being read, it stays visible. Well, at least until I swap folders or toggle the filter on/off/on.

Why is this? Other email clients directly hide these emails.

Hi, Address Book Search doesn't show any results for example Phone Numbers or Addresses.

Search for Phone Number 030 shows: No contacts found - which is not true! Search for Address City Berlin shows: No contacts found - which is not true!

Please improve the search, so that it considers any contact detail.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards blueice_haller

if i use the search function thunderbird find nothing although hundrets of the searched mails available are.

example i got 100 Mails from insurance Allianz Direct if i put allianz in the dialog Thunderbird find nothing i tried it via strg shift F it is the same

what shell i do?

best regards

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?

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?

Hi,

I do like Thunderbird but there are a couple of things that i'm finding it frustrating to work with and wondered if someone could provide some help?

So I use quite a lot of nested folders, sometimes up to 5 levels deep to keep things organised. Eg:

I a sub folder structure like so:

Trips - -Asia 2025 - - - -Hotels - - - -Flights - - - - - -International - - - - - -Domestic - - - -Parks - - - - - -Park 1 - - - - - -Park 2 - - - - - -Park 3 - -Europe 2025 - - - -Parks - - - - - -Park 1 - - - - - -Park 2

I'd like to be able to be able to select a top level folder (such as Asia 2025) and see all the messages in it and all it's subfolders. Effectively ALL the emails relating to the trip. Is there a way to achieve this?

Second issue: I have a saved search folder called Flagged. Right now I have to edit the properties of the saved search, then click "Choose" and manually tick each folder / sub folder I wish to show flagged messages for. I know I can select the first, select the last, press spacebar to toggle those folders. But it doesn't expand subfolders, and it means that when I add more folders (which I do very very often), I have to remember to manually update the list of selected folders (on 2 machines too as i have this account set up in 2 places). Is there a way to just select a parent folder (in my case i'd like to just select the account itself) and have it automatically include everything below that. Then I don;t need to update or change it as my folders change.

Surely both of these suggestions are sensible and would increase the usability of Thunderbird.

Also, how can I find out what folder a message is stored in from the message in cards view, the message detail panel itself or the right click menu of the message card?

Thanks, Neil

I feel so incompetent regarding this because I feel it should JUST WORK, but for me it just doesnt...

When searching for a name/date/etc in the top right search bar I typically get no result or unusable ones. Obviously this is a problem when I dont know where a particular email may be.

When I use the search messages window from my root folder, the one that gives more flexibility ie; match any, subject,contains, etc...i also get no results. For example a message that is currently an open tab in TB cant be found by that search messages window. its still searching and i began the search before I started writing this question...

When in a folder or sub-folder, the quick filter search feature works as expected.

I've checked all the places i could imagine that might govern global search options that might change this critical seeming lack of functionality and have found none.

Is this a true limitation or am I just missing something ?

thanks for your consideration- q