Thunderbird Community Forum

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

When I reconcile my checking account each month, it's handy to be able to search my e-mail for the amounts of transactions that I can't identify by name alone. Gmail allowed me to do this. Thunderbird, for some reason, doesn't. Anytime I search for a numerical value (e.g., "36" or "9.58"), Thunderbird returns no results. Why are numeric strings not searchable? Is anyone working on this deficiency?

how to retrieve, via search, received messages in Thunderbird? when using search it only supplies me with those message which I posted myself, but these I received.

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?

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.

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 ?

Went to search for someone in the Quick Search and it did not bring up their emails in the folder, which exist as I confirmed by sorting alphabetically and finding them. Why is this?

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,

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.

Hello Thunderbird team,

We are an organisation that recently migrated from another email client to Thunderbird. Overall the client has been fast and easy to use, but we have identified a key functionality gap that impacts our day-to-day operations.

Previously we relied heavily on the ability to search not only in email body text but also inside PDF attachment contents (e.g., specific keywords within attached PDF files). In Thunderbird this capability is currently missing, existing search and add-ons (e.g., Expression Search – NG, etc.) do not index or find text inside PDFs.

This feature is critical for business users that need to locate emails based on text inside attachments. We would like to request that full-text search of common attachment types (PDF, Word documents, etc.) be considered for inclusion in a future Thunderbird release, ideally with options for indexing and performance controls.

If this is already on the roadmap, we would appreciate any guidance on how to enable it or track progress. If not, we would be grateful if the team could evaluate this enhancement.

Thanks for your work on Thunderbird and wishing you a happy new year!

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.

Would like to see these enhancements made to Thunderbird:

1. Add recipient email address to view. This could be added next to the sender email address, separated by something like a pipe character "|" and identified by "From: ", "F: ", "Sender: ", or "S: " in front of the sender address and "To: ", "T: ", "Recipient: ", or "R: " in front of the recipient address
2. Add search filter terms to search capability. Some example filter terms would be 1) "mailed-to:" or "recipient" to search for emails sent to a specific email address or domain (using wildcard), 2) "mailed-from" or "sender" to search for emails sent from a specific email address or domain (using wildcard).

I am on TB 146.0.1.

I recently noticed that some items seemed to be missing from global search results so I ventured to rebuild the GLODA index.

The first few times, it seemed to get stuck on specific IMAP sent folders. I repaired the folders and eventually, the index completed to full success. It is about 2.5 GB.

It still doesn't seem like some searches are working correctly, but maybe there is an explanation. Most of my email other than IMAP sent emails is stored in my Local Archives.

Using the term "klinghardt" for example, global search shows only results from 2025, a total of 992 items, and does shows some from both IMAP and Local Archives. From Local Archives, it shows 255 items in the "From Visitors 2016" folder. It does not go back prior to 2025.

However, there are many earlier emails in that folder before 2025 with the same term.

Using the term "klinghardt education" does show messages back to 2017 and a total of 524 of them in the "From Visitors 2016" folder. Why would using just "klinghardt" show less than "klinghardt education"?

The "From Visitors 2016" folder has almost 140K messages from about 10 years.

If I go "From Visitors 2016" folder and do Search Messages with the same "klinghardt" term on subject alone, I get 982 returned messages that go back to 2015. I believe this is not using GLODA but am not certain.

If I go to Quick Filter on Sender, Recipients, Subject, I get 1251 items going back to 2015.

If I see messages over many years with Search Messages and Quick Filter, why do I only see messages from 2025 when I use the global search?

To make things a bit more complex, there is also a "From Visitors" folder in Local Archives that has hundreds more with terms from 2011-2015 that don't seem to show up in the global search results at all with either of the above. If I use "klinghardt academy" though, some results do come back from the "From Visitors" folder. Total of 32K messages in the From Visitors folder.

I have already tried many options from the documentation and suggested by ChatGPT but am hesitant to do anything that could not be reversible.

At this point, I am unclear on what here is a problem vs. an explainable behavior.

I would be grateful or any thoughts or next steps you might suggest.

Thank you and happy holidays, :) Scott

Steps to reproduce the problems:

Perform a Global Search (ctrl + K). Search for any string. Just make sure there is at least one search result. > Click "Show results as list". > Right-click on the search result in the Message List Pane. (Please see the footnote.) > The pop-up context menu has two problems:

(1) There are redundant dividers. (Please see the first attached image.)

(2) Hover the mouse over "Tag". The pop-up submenu of "Tag" is incomplete. The menu includes "New Tag" and "Manage Tags". However, "Remove All Tags", "Important", "Work", "Personal", "To Do" and "Later" are missing. (Please see the second attached image.)

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These problems (redundant dividers and incomplete submenu) also occur in Troubleshoot Mode.

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These problems only occur after using Global Search and clicking "Show results as list".

If I right-click a message in the Message List Pane of a regular folder (such as the "Inbox" folder or "Templates" folder), the pop-up context menu displays correctly: There are no redundant dividers, and the submenu of "Tag" is complete. (Please see the third attached image.)

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Operating system: Windows 10.

Versions of Thunderbird: 140.3.1esr (32-bit) and 140.6.0esr (32-bit). Previously I was using 140.3.1esr (32-bit), and currently I am using 140.6.0esr (32-bit). Both versions have the same problems.

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Footnote: When I right-click on the search result in the Message List Pane, the following error messages display in the Error Console (please see the fourth attached image):

Uncaught NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIMsgDBView.getThreadContainingIndex]        mailCommon.js:647
    isCommandEnabled chrome://messenger/content/mailCommon.js:647
    fillMailContextMenu chrome://messenger/content/mailContext.js:340
    onPopupShowing chrome://messenger/content/mailContext.js:146
    handleEvent chrome://messenger/content/mailContext.js:133
    _onContextMenu chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:5235
    handleEvent chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:4758
    init chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:4712
    async* chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:170
    async* chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:139

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The fifth attached image shows mailCommon.js:647.