Search does not seem to properly scan the BODY of an email. Are there documented issues for this?
I have noticed for some time that Thunderbird (52.6.0 32 bit on Win 10) doesnt seem to properly scan the BODY of an email. I thought it might be just me, but I checked carefully today. In one example, I can find an email by looking for part of its SUBJECT but not for part of its BODY. Are there any documented issues that I should be aware of (e.g. does it depend on whether Im using IMAP or POP3). It seems a very strange - ind intermittent problem, but Im now sure that it is a real problem and not just me :-)
All Replies (3)
I know I have seen discussion about this, and I recollect mention of the complexities of doing a search through text that is encoded in some way (html, base-64 etc) along with the more obvious difficulties if the body text is stored on a remote server. There was some hope expressed that with some other changes, the ability to reliably search message body text might come about as a welcome if unintended side effect. But I don't think this has happened yet.
So, yes, it is a known and acknowledged issue, but offhand I don't know any bug numbers to pass on to you.
Modified by Zenos
Zenos said
...along with the more obvious difficulties if the body text is stored on a remote server.
I wonder if that's my problem? I have several email accounts and one is IMAP. I think its the IMAP account that has not been "behaving" itself. But I have been under the impression that I was downloading IMAP content and copying it to a local folder. Perhaps Im wrong in that assumption.
If a cure to this problem is not simple then perhaps a warning could be given that the search might not be comprehensive? (e.g. During this search some emails with encoded or remote bodies were discovered. These have not been searched".
I don't know. I read people opining that IMAP downloads only headers and body text is fetched on demand. I rather doubt that as I have GB of data in my IMAP folders. And when I inspect my maildir files in those folders, they are full of real messages. So, on this basis, I wouldn't think that (in general) messages stored in IMAP accounts would be any more difficult to search than those in POP or Local Folders.