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I'm hoping to find some syntax documentation and/or information on how to do more complex searching within Thunderbird.

I've seen references to some basic multipart searching capabilities. (ie. placing scott "tuesday night" in the search field would result in a list of emails containing both of those criteria.)

But I'm looking for even more such as placing scott "tuesday night" folder:inbox, which would allow me to narrow down that search to JUST the inbox, not any and all folders below it.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Bonjour, ce matin 2 juin 2025 j'ai vu qu'il était possible de faire des recherches en changeant uniquement le moteur de recherche qui figure sur une liste. Mais je suis incapable de trouver la page de Mozilla Firefox qui s'est ouverte en premier AVEC MA CONNEXION INTERNET CE MATIN COMMENT PUIS6JE RETROUVER CETTE PAGE ? Cordialement Dominique

Firefox 139.0.4 changed behavior of text search (find-in-page). It now opens closed accordions and finds text in the <details> text (which it did not do prior to this update). This really breaks my webpage. I think this was changed for compatibility with Chromium.

Is there a config setting to change this behavior? Alternatively, can I change the accordion html so that Firefox will not search the <details>? (These are my private webpages, so I can edit them.)

I want to permanently remove Quora and Reddit from my search results, so I asked AI and on number 4. it says "Add Search Engine" but in my firefox settings their is no such setting. Any suggestions would be helpful. Here is the AI response:

To permanently remove Quora and Reddit from your Firefox search results, you can create a custom search engine that excludes these sites. This involves adding a new search engine with a modified search query that includes site exclusions, and then making it your default search engine. Here's how to do it:

 1.  Open Firefox settings: Click the menu button (three horizontal lines) in the top right corner and select "Settings".
 2.  Go to Search: In the left sidebar, click on "Search".
 3.  Find Search Shortcuts: Scroll down to the "Search Shortcuts" section.
 4.  Add a new search engine: Click the "Add Search Engine" button.
 5. Fill in the details:
       Name: Give it a name like "Google Clean" or similar.
       Keyword: Choose a keyword, for example, "gc".
       URL: This is the most important part. Use the following modified URL, replacing YOUR_SEARCH_QUERY with %s: 

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s -site:quora.com -site:reddit.com This tells Firefox to search Google, but exclude results from Quora and Reddit.

   Make it default: Click the three dots next to your newly created search engine and select "Make Default". 

Now, when you type a search query into the Firefox address bar, it will automatically exclude Quora and Reddit from the search results.

We’re having a weird issue with Thunderbird that’s showing up on multiple computers using the same mailbox. When we search using the top search bar (Ctrl+K), it often doesn't find all emails that clearly match the search term For example, we have multiple sent emails with the searched phrase in the subject, but Ctrl+K only finds one of them, even though there are two (or more) that match. When we use Ctrl+Shift+F (advanced search) with the exact same keyword and folder, all the matching emails show up just fine.

So it's not like the emails are missing —they're just not being picked up by the Ctrl+K search.

The annoying part is that Ctrl+K lets us open the whole conversation thread, which is really useful, while Ctrl+Shift+F only shows single messages.

Ive tried to:

- repair folders

- delete .msf files

- rebuild global database

- reenable "Include messages in this folder in Global Search results" but it did not help

And this isn’t just one machine, it's happening on every PC where this mailbox is used

In what file does Firefox store information about the icons of added search engines?

(After copying the profile with the search.json.mozlz4 file, search engines added by the user work correctly, but their icons cannot be seen - each search engine is marked with the same icon 'magnifier' - as you can see in the attachment.)

Hello: FF 140.b9 64b w11p. Are there ANY search engines (not nec browsers, just want to do a search in the address bar or search field) that do NOT go to an AI site to search? I want to minimize my use of AI technology, which uses extremely environmentally costly data farms. Thank you.

Hi,

I am trying to add Brave as the search engine on the Firefox settings in iOS, however, I continue to receive an error message stating “Please fill all fields correctly” I am using the below URL:

https://search.brave.com/search?q=%25s&source=desktop

And

search.brave.com or https://search.brave.com

But none are working and I continue to get the same error message

During the configuration of my iPad, I noticed that there is no option to add a custom query URL, like it exists under Android. Therefore, after adding the custom search engine (and when it's chosen) the search suggestions are missing. While I know that there are technical limitations regarding Firefox on IOS/IPadOS, I don't think/hope that this is one of them.

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”.

PLEASE HELP! I allowed Avast to do a "clean up" this week. That usually entailed a "scan" for viruses. NOT ANYMORE! My computer is really messed up! I just tried to delete Avast, and even though I hate to see ads, I think their Ad Blocker is messing up my PC. I just noticed that when I asked what I thought was FIREFOX a question, the answers were supplied by an entity called THLIOKNI. WTF is THAT?????? Seriously, what is happening to my relatively NEW PC--had to buy a new CPU in October of 2023. And I've always used Firefox. But WINDOWS 11 is the operating system on this PC, and it is NOT compatible with Firefox apparently! I'm an elderly woman and I cannot handle this stress! What I also noticed is that I read Substack writers and depend on them for accurate description of current political and social news, but now I can't access the "like" buttons on commentators. Is that a Substack issue (I don't think so!), or is it something to do with the Avast "clean up?" WHAT ON EARTH IS THLIOKNI and how the hell did that get on my computer? PLEASE ADVISE ASAP! And I sincerely hope a REAL PERSON reads this! I do not want a million responses from other readers at other times, I want to hear from a REAL PERSON! You have my e-mail address. Catherine O'Kelly

Doing any search brings up result page that just has my query and a search magnifying glass - not the search results as expected and working on Mac.

This is 2 days old only as of 11 June 25.

Crying here as I depend on it sooo much; this is a work PC and DDG is my go-to for research.

The Thunderbird search feature use some kind of fuzzy search, but I would like to be able to search for the exact word I typed.

One example is if I look for "assurance", Thunderbird will show results for "assurer", "assurent" in addition to "assurance", but I would like only the email with the exact word "assurance" to be returned (sorry, my last search was using a French term, but you get the gist of my question even if you don't speak French). I tried putting the word between double quotes or adding a + sign in front of the word, it doesn't work.

Any option I didn't see that would let me do this or is it a feature request I'm asking here? I didn't find anything in the documentation, nor any add-on that would be helpful. Even when I’m sorting the results by relevance, with the number of emails I have, it's not as helpful than finding the exact word(s) I'm searching, which is what I want most of the time.

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?

Very annoying!

where is the new search icon...i don't see it on/near the address bar on my firefox browser.....u say the new icon allows the user to choose which search engine to use but where is the icon?