Until very recently I could go into any folder and just put a word and it would do a search of that folder, but has stopped doing that now. I can be in same folder and put a name and that works fine.

Those two sentences seem in conflict. Unless you are saying you can search for a contact (i.e. something in your address book), but it won't search for a garden variety text string?

And does the problem reproduce in Help > Troubleshoot mode?

In all the time I have had Thunderbird using the Quick search I can be in a folder of in inbox or sent and put in a name and it comes up with a list of people sa, with that first name. I have also when in any folder been able to put in a word like "Food" when trying to find emails to patient's that I have sent out with Food information in the subject line.

Now it shows nothing when I put in a word in the quick search box. I have not altered anything, but it is behaving differently.

In 'Quick Filter Search' (Ctrl+Shift+K) Type a name which appeared in the email From header whether this was a display name applied by sender or part of email address then make sure the necessary filters eg: sender are selected.

This option is available in the 'Global Search' (Ctrl+K) Start to type a name which appeared in the email From header whether this was a display name applied by sender or part of email address, it offers a drop down option to select messages by email address which you can select.

I have said that finding email names or addresses is not the issue. It is when I search for a part of the subject line that used to work and now does not.

As far as I can see you cannot have two criteria in the View menu so, I am trying to work out why I could use quick search to find either a person or email address and also search for a word in the subject before for 17 years without altering anything in View and now cannot do this.

As far as I know, nothing in the "View" menu has an effect on quick filters.

Does the quick filter show all three buttons enabled to the right of "Filter messages by:" - Sender, Recipients, Subject?

screen shot...

Hi Toad Hall and Wayne Merry

In the end I realised that something was very amiss and set my iMac back to 1st September via Migration Assistant when I set up my latest iMac. It took time, but now I have "Sender", "Recipient", "Subject" back in the mix under "Quick Filter " so, everything is back to normal.

Thanks for your help :)

the "Quick Filter" button isn't even doing anything on my system. And the "Filter these Messages" box ( <ctrl><shift>K from the text the box shows) used to show me matching messages as I was typing in text. Now it doesn't filter as I go, nor does it search when I press <enter>. This was working on an earlier version, I would have to try to force an earlier build to run my current messages/email to try going back.

I did try rebuilding the Global Messages Database but that didn't fix anything.

You will need to start a fresh question as my situation was resolved. Good luck!