Search Messages function seems to be broken on TB 160.0 (Meadow)

Are you aware that there are multiple search features in Thunderbird? And none of them have changed significantly for the past several version? There are:

- Global Search

- Find Messages <Ctrl_Shift+F>

- Quick Search

Global Search https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-search

This article is a little outdated, but still mostly relevant:

Finding Information in Messages https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Help_Documentation:Finding_Information_in_Messages

Also, if you need more features and don't mind getting more technical, there is the useful add-on "Expression Search - NG" (<https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/expression-search-ng/>.)

Also, you may want to consider changing the update setting from Automatic to "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them" to avoid unwanted surprises.

I am using the "Search Messages" function (Find Messages <Ctrl_Shift+F>), and despite Lin's assertion that nothing has significantly changed, I can assure you that something has significantly changed.

To prove my point, I used my wife's PC which was running TB 153.0.2. I tried a <Ctrl_Shift+F> search of the Inbox for messages where the "From" line contains "Smithsonian". I got 43 hits, which is about what I expected.

TB had previously downloaded the latest updates, and TB was waiting for me to restart it to install those updates. But the important point is that this search was done on TB 153.0.2, and it worked just fine.

When I restarted TB, it came up as version 160.0. I did the exact same search as before, on the same (my wife's) PC with the same mailboxes, and not only did I get no hits, I didn't even get a response telling me there were no hits. It's as though the "Search" button was inactive.

There were also a couple of minor dialog behavior issues under TB 160.0 that were not present under TB 153.0.2. For example, under TB 160.0 you have to hit the Clear button for the drop-down controls to appear, and those drop-down lists are empty until you select which mailboxes you want to search. Is that a feature or a quirk? Either way, it's real. Circumventable but real.

But even after getting the drop-down boxes to appear and filling them in as needed, and specifying what to search for, I get no results. This is consistent and repeatable on two different Windows 11 PCs.

So there you have it. Something in the <Ctrl_Shift+F> search function has definitely changed, and the result is that the <Ctrl_Shift+F> function simply does not work under TB 160.0. I stand by my diagnosis.

Hobie

Nice sleuthing, Lin!

I don't have Cardbook, but I did the same thing you did, by disabling all 5 of my add-ons and re-enabling them one by one until something broke. In my case, it turned out to be QNote, which is a nice utility but one I can get along without. So I'll leave it turned off for now. But it would be interesting to find out what changed in in the latest TB update that caused both Cardbook and QNote to go askew. I did notice that QNote had a problem with TB 115 which affected, among other things, the Search Messages function. That was a long time ago, but perhaps that problem is back again.

Thanks for the time and effort you put into this!

Hobie

I filed a bug report to the Cardbook author, and after a short conversation he was able to identify the bug that broke the Search Messages function, and provided a workaround. Cardbook has an option to add extra columns to a message list, and the Search didn't like that. That option can be disabled and Search returns to normal.

You can see the conversation here:

https://gitlab.com/CardBook/CardBook/-/work_items/2030

He mentions that QNote breaks things in a similar way. I don't use that add-on, but you may want to look to see if it has a similar option you can turn off.