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Quick Filter does not return correct results in Unified Inbox (Thunderbird 140.12.0 ESR)

I'm using Thunderbird **140.12.0 ESR (aarch64)** and believe I've found an issue with the Quick Filter when searching the **Unified Inbox**.

• • Steps to reproduce:**

1. Open the **Unified Inbox**. 2. Open the Quick Filter bar. 3. Enter a search term (e.g. "maddy").

• • Observed behaviour in the Unified Inbox:**

• With no "Filter messages by" options selected, entering a search term does not filter the message list.
• Selecting **Sender**, **Recipients** and **Subject** still does not return the expected email.
• Selecting **Body** changes the results after a delay, but the expected email is still **not** returned.

If I open the **actual Inbox** containing that same email and repeat the search:

• The expected email is found using **Sender**, **Recipients** and **Subject**.
• When **Body** is selected, the search takes longer and eventually returns additional matching messages, including the expected email.

This behaviour is reproducible with multiple search terms and suggests that the Quick Filter does not search the **Unified Inbox (virtual folder)** correctly, even though the same search works in the underlying physical folder.

Could you please confirm whether this is a known issue or a bug?

I added two new email accounts to my Thunderbird installation (140.12.1esr (64-bit) under Windows 10), and am able to receive and send mail just fine. But the T-bird Search utility doesn't work for those accounts. I can do a Search for an email address, subject, etc. that's showing on my screen for those accounts, but the Search utility comes up empty. Search does work for three other accounts, however. Any ideas?

Sometimes a search term will pull up many emails I need to sift though, like in the case where it's a common word, like permit. I was searching the term "permit" for building permit emails and got many unrelated emails that were more recent with permit in the email body. I am able to quickly skim and see these are unrelated but the limiting factor is only ten results per page. When I click load more, takes a few moments to load. I was unable to find any way to change this. How can it be done? Should be possible, it's doesn't affect Mozilla's processing because everything is done locally on my machine. I would much rather 100 results to load or to load indefinitely.

Additional question: on that search term, many unrelated emails came up as mentioned before. When I searched the same term in gmail in my internet browser, only relevant emails came up. Why is this? How do I improve the thunderbird search?

I am getting a lot of phishing emails. They all come from email addresses from "onmicrosoft.com". These I can find pretty easy. The other thing they have in common is this URL/'server name' in the Message Header "send.workwithshadow.com".

Is there a way to search and/or filter for text in the Message Header?

Thanks, Walter Cook

I have some emails from BT (e.g. no-reply@inform.bt.com, BT@updates.bt.com, hello@message.bt.com)

When I search (using the bar at the top) for:

- "bt", it returns no results ("No messages match your search) - "message.bt.com", it returns the relevant results - "bt.com", it seems to return anything with ".com" in it (which is lots of things, my computer doesn't like this situation)

Is this a bug (or multiple bugs)?

I was wondering if there is a way to easily copy a saved search from one parent folder to another. I have searches I use to c apture emails for tax purposes. I use dates, subject lines, etc. to capture these emails and I have almost a dozen per tax year. It would be nice to copy my 2025 saved searches to my 2026 folder, and then just edit the dates as needed to capture the correct year. Thanks for any help you can provide.

How I could terminate the search when it has reached the end of the e-mail, and not just tell me "reached end of page, continued from top", a message that is so obscure and — if the window is quite narrow — will not even show.

Why I cannot select to get a pop-up note telling me I've reached the end of e-mail and ask if I would like to continue from top?

I have used thunderbird for many years and was always very pleased with how easy it is to search for old emails, using just about anything--an email address, a word in the subject line, or anywhere else. Lately, it no longer finds all the message for a simple thing, like an email address. Has something changed?

Also it seems that copies of my emails are not necessarily kept locally in that it often says it has to download my messages off the server, which can take a bit of time. In the past it has only downloaded new messages, but now it seems to download everything.

All this leave me with the sinking feeling that my whole online record could disappear at any minute. Any ideas?

I did Edit - Find - Search Messages and then Edit - Find- Global Search and searched for messages. Now all the e-mails in my Inbox disappeared. What can I do? Thank you.

I have a lot of emails stored in different local folders. My search now hang. They go so far than just hang. Is there a way to rebuild the complete indexing for my thunderbird install?

Whenever I try to search my various emails for some text, at least 40% of the time it shows me the attached message. I'm on Version 149.0.1 but it's been happening ever since I installed Thunderbird (maybe 4 or 5 months ago?) My first move is to check that I haven't mis-spelled the word I'm looking for (which I usually haven't) and I definitely know that the word is valid for one or more emails. So why does this message keep appearing?

Previously I'd been running an old 32-bit version of Thunderbird (which I don't have installed any more) but I don't remember ever seeing this with the older version.

Hi, Thunderbird search as we know is and always has been megabroken. I search for "4.91" and it does not find anything even though there are e-mails with that string in subject and body.

Isn't it about time to fix it?

I have a folder that is set (via a quick-filter) to show only unread emails. Now when i mark an email as being read, it stays visible. Well, at least until I swap folders or toggle the filter on/off/on.

Why is this? Other email clients directly hide these emails.

When I search for a name in Thunderbird mail e.g Lennart, nothing from 2026 comes up, only older mails from 2025-12-31 and backwards. if I search on his e-mailadress, e.g l.name@ppost.se it finds avery mail. What is wrong?

Hi,

I do like Thunderbird but there are a couple of things that i'm finding it frustrating to work with and wondered if someone could provide some help?

So I use quite a lot of nested folders, sometimes up to 5 levels deep to keep things organised. Eg:

I a sub folder structure like so:

Trips - -Asia 2025 - - - -Hotels - - - -Flights - - - - - -International - - - - - -Domestic - - - -Parks - - - - - -Park 1 - - - - - -Park 2 - - - - - -Park 3 - -Europe 2025 - - - -Parks - - - - - -Park 1 - - - - - -Park 2

I'd like to be able to be able to select a top level folder (such as Asia 2025) and see all the messages in it and all it's subfolders. Effectively ALL the emails relating to the trip. Is there a way to achieve this?

Second issue: I have a saved search folder called Flagged. Right now I have to edit the properties of the saved search, then click "Choose" and manually tick each folder / sub folder I wish to show flagged messages for. I know I can select the first, select the last, press spacebar to toggle those folders. But it doesn't expand subfolders, and it means that when I add more folders (which I do very very often), I have to remember to manually update the list of selected folders (on 2 machines too as i have this account set up in 2 places). Is there a way to just select a parent folder (in my case i'd like to just select the account itself) and have it automatically include everything below that. Then I don;t need to update or change it as my folders change.

Surely both of these suggestions are sensible and would increase the usability of Thunderbird.

Also, how can I find out what folder a message is stored in from the message in cards view, the message detail panel itself or the right click menu of the message card?

Thanks, Neil

I feel so incompetent regarding this because I feel it should JUST WORK, but for me it just doesnt...

When searching for a name/date/etc in the top right search bar I typically get no result or unusable ones. Obviously this is a problem when I dont know where a particular email may be.

When I use the search messages window from my root folder, the one that gives more flexibility ie; match any, subject,contains, etc...i also get no results. For example a message that is currently an open tab in TB cant be found by that search messages window. its still searching and i began the search before I started writing this question...

When in a folder or sub-folder, the quick filter search feature works as expected.

I've checked all the places i could imagine that might govern global search options that might change this critical seeming lack of functionality and have found none.

Is this a true limitation or am I just missing something ?

thanks for your consideration- q