230384 - It should be easier to search the message body from the front end window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 244325

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Tom-Erik Duestad]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031206 Firebird/0.7+ (aebrahim)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031206 Firebird/0.7+ (aebrahim)

It's a bit complicated (especially for people used to Outlook) to search the
body text.  It's easy to search the "subject or sender" as this is available in
the search toolbar.

My suggestion is having a dropdown box in the search toolbar (instead of the
"subject or sender" label) where one could choose what should be searched e.g
"Subject or sender", "Body","Subject or Body" or any other field users might
find usefull.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Tom-Erik Duestad]

Attachment: Searching, but leaves app non-responsive..

This is somewhat a "proof-of-concept", but as one can see it leaves the app non
responsive.  The UI is not updated as I'm unsure if this will work at all.
This is my first attempt at mozilla, and maybe a bad one.
Looks like Im blocking the message loop, or something. The "Search Messages"
dialog box is a lot faster and leaves the app responsive. My patch uses 100%
cpu util, the app seems to hung and is slooooooow.
Can anybody give me a hint, is this the way to go?

Comment 2

[Marc O'Morain]

This one really annoys me too. Some of the work I do is moderating newsgroups.

I have all the messages downloaded for offline viewing, but I cannot search the
bodies. Outlook Xxpress lets me do this.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

see also bug 63573 which may be being left open for just this feature (see bug
63573 comment 9)

Comment 4

[Oliver Giesen]

I propose the summary should be changed: The point is not really "making it
easier" to search message bodies. The point is being able to search in message
bodies *at all* - not just via the QuickSearch bar. And I don't mean just inside
the selected message but in all messages in the current folder (optionally
recursive, too). AFAICT you could currently only search in sender and subject.
Geez, is noone else seriously using Thunderbird or how could anyone do without
this? Or am I just missing some kind of hidden option?

Is this request different enough to file it as a new bug?

This is actually one of only three things that still keep me from switching to
Thunderbird for good (the other two being a useful Watched/Ignored Threads
functionality and threaded views even when filtered - looking for relevant bugs
right now).

Comment 5

[Tom-Erik Duestad]

Oliver, this bug is about searching the message body from the Quicksearch bar.

It is already possible to search the message body from the "Search messages" 
dialog window. But this is a bit hidden in the Edit->Find->Search messages, 
where one has to define this search.

Of course you also have the key shortcut <CTRL>-<SHIFT>F, but still...

Comment 6

[Oliver Giesen]

Ah, I see what you mean. I'm mostly using Thunderbird as a newsreader at the
moment though. It seems all the other search criteria (anything besides Sender
and Subject) are only available for emails but not for newsgroup postings... so,
in that case I should file a more specific new bug, right?

Comment 7

[Bogdan Stroe]

*** Bug 250131 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Robert Harvey]

Attachment: screen dump of edit-find-searchmessages

The closing comment to my bug 250131 says:
>The search toolbar does not provide a search in the messages body, 
>and this issue is covered by bug 230384.
>
>However, you can use Edit->Find->Search Messages, or Ctrl+Shift+F for that.

This screengrab shows me doing exactly that, and being unable to search in the
message body.  Thunderbird 0.7.1 on XP

I stand by my earlier remarks in 250131.  I can only search in subject or
sender.

Comment 9

[christian]

Some clarification:
It _is_ possible to search Mail bodies using the "search messages" dialog.
It _is not_ possible to search News bodies using the "search messages" dialog
(as the attachment in comment #8 shows). A workaround to this one is to define a
custom message view, since views are able to search NG-Message bodies for some
reason... Of course it would be nice to incoorporate that functionality into the
search messages dialog, but as someone said: This bug is just about changing the
quicksearch bar...

Comment 10

[Robert Harvey]

>but as someone said: This bug is just about 
>changing the quicksearch bar...

Yes.  But it wasn't me that cross-referenced it!  
My original bug 250131  is now a duplicate of bug 243120 instead.  The
attachment is cross-referred on 243120 now.

Comment 11

[Tom-Erik Duestad]

Using Thunderbird 20040728 nightly, it seems to me that the quicksearch bar 
has been updated to allow searching in "Subject", "Sender", "Subject or 
Sender" and **"Message Body"**.

They have choosen a strange layout for this as it's impossible to see what 
kind of search it was, once you have entered a search term.

Doesn't look like the "Message Body" works too well, as I cant get it to work 
now, but Im pretty sure I worked another time I tried.

Comment 12

[Tom-Erik Duestad]

I guess this bug is a duplicate of bug 244325?

And this is what I saw in comment 11

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 244325 ***