search functionality not working properly
Before TB68 I used to use addons "expression search" and "sort by date not by relevance" . Both of them don't work anymore in thunderbird 68. Searching for old messages is an important reason for an email program and it does not work well in 68. E.g. I did buy something last week and received a message with a tracking code from a sender named packlink. When search for "pack" which was the only substring I did remember, I did only get results which were more than 2 years old. They were sorted by relevance in the first place which is not very helpful. Even if I sorted the results manually by date it did not give me the expected result. I then manually went through my folders, sorted by date until I finally found the desired mail.
Why does the search work so badly? If it does not handle expressions, it should at least be able to find substrings.
Chosen solution
re :The drawback is that with your method I have to know which folder to search You do not need to know the actual folder because you can select to search an account name and that includes 'Local Folders'.
Search for message in: click on drop down to see list of mail accounts. Hover over a mail account name and you will see a further drop down list showing all the folders...BUT at the top of that list is the account name. Select that account name and it will search on the entire account.
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It appears you are using Global Search. If so, rebuild the database and see if the results change:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
Consider using Classic Search (Ctrl+Shift+F) to search an account, or Quick Filter Bar (Ctrl+Shift+K) to search a single folder.
I did rebuild the database but the problem is still the same. If I do a global search for "pack" I do not find the messages containing "packlink" from last week. Searching a single folder doesn't help if I moved something into the wrong folder by accident. Thus a global search is the most crucial search required.
BTW: I have messages dating back to 2006 in my archives. Thus sorting for relevance is in most case the wrong decision. Is there a way to have "date" and "list" as the default sorting and output format?
There are different search methods which work in various ways. I suggest you use: 'Menu icon' > 'Find' > 'Search Messages' Search on the account name rather than a folder in that account. search subfolders Select 'Match all of the following'
If 'Pack' or 'packlink' was mentioned in Subject: Subject contains pack click on 'Search'
Results can be sorted by date and the location is listed. click on email to open.
I can't say why global search doesn't find a message that you know exists, even after rebuilding the database. Is the message in a folder excluded from global search? Right-click the folder, Properties, and check if it's included. Some folders, such as Trash, are excluded by default.
There is a beta version of the expression search add-on that is being developed for TB 68:
Toad-Hall said
There are different search methods which work in various ways. I suggest you use: 'Menu icon' > 'Find' > 'Search Messages' Search on the account name rather than a folder in that account. search subfolders Select 'Match all of the following' If 'Pack' or 'packlink' was mentioned in Subject: Subject contains pack click on 'Search' Results can be sorted by date and the location is listed. click on email to open.
At least that helped in a certain way. I was able to find the packlink message even if I searched for "pack" only. The drawback is that with your method I have to know which folder to search and also the field. I have 8 different mail accounts set up and I save the message into folders in the generic "local folder". Then I use year archives to back out older messages.
Whenever I try to find something I very much would need a full text search for any substring in any item in any archive. This is what I think the general search box should do.
I am working on w10 but coming from linux I do not understand why there isn't something like a simple grep which just searches through everything and comes back with a list of messages where a string was found. I wouldn't need a full index for that and on modern machines a plain text grep even within a 1GB text file is still reasonably fast.
sfhowes said
I can't say why global search doesn't find a message that you know exists, even after rebuilding the database. Is the message in a folder excluded from global search? Right-click the folder, Properties, and check if it's included. Some folders, such as Trash, are excluded by default. There is a beta version of the expression search add-on that is being developed for TB 68: https://github.com/wangvisual/expression-search/issues/80
Thanks for directing me to this. I am going to have a look at it. In the meantime I regardToad-Hall's suggestion as a workaround if I again have problems with the general search.
Chosen Solution
re :The drawback is that with your method I have to know which folder to search You do not need to know the actual folder because you can select to search an account name and that includes 'Local Folders'.
Search for message in: click on drop down to see list of mail accounts. Hover over a mail account name and you will see a further drop down list showing all the folders...BUT at the top of that list is the account name. Select that account name and it will search on the entire account.