260665 - Thunderbird cannot search in encrypted messages

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Tom Braun]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

(I know that there is an old bug related to this on the Mozilla-sepcific
bugzilla, but since there is a way to file a bug for Thunderbird specifically,
I thought I do that as well.  Sorry if this should come up double, but it is a
really important issue.)

The issue:
----------
When enigmail is used to encrypt messages, then these messages cannot be
searched for keywords.  I think it's easily understandable why this is the
case, but on the other hand, it should also be easily understandable why this
is an incredibly important feature that is missing here.  I am trying to
convince my employer to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird/Enigmail, but how
likely is that to happen, if you then cannot find your e-mails anymore?  This
limitation makes this otherwise wonderful mail-client and encryption module
basically unusable in a serious environment.

It's not an enigmail issue, since it is not in control over when it is called,
right?  But Thunderbird knows to call enigmail when a message needs to be
displayed.  Therefore, Thunderbird should also know to call enigmail when a
message needs to be looked at in order to search for stuff.

I know that there will be performance issues, but anything is better than
nothing.  Performance issues can be addressed later, as long as at least we
have the chance to find our e-mails again, once they have been sent or
received.

We all advocate using open source software, and using encryption, and would
like this to be done in businesses and other mission critical environments as
well.  But unless a business critical feature such as 'search' works even when
one uses encryption, this is not going to happen.

Thunderbird is really excellent, and I enjoy using it very much, but please
consider the importance of this issue.

Thank you very much!

Tom



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have Enigmail and OpenGPG installed for Thunderbird
2. Receive an encrypted message.
3. Try to find that message by searching for something in its body.
4. See?

Actual Results:  
Could not find the message.

Expected Results:  
When traversing the mbox file, Thunderbird should have recognized that this is
an encrypted message and should have called enigmail to translate it into clear-
text as needed.

I know that Thunderbird uses indexing to find stuff faster, but I would be
willing to foresake that feature, if I could at least search in the encrypted
messages.

Comment 1

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

did you mean bug 188988? If so, there's no need to file a separate bug for
Thunderbird, as that bug is filed against back-end component shared between TB
and Mozilla Suite. If that's what you meant, please resolve this bug as a
duplicate of  188988. Thanks.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.