269355 - IMAP search includes every mail in result, not only matching

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 232409

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Marcus Münch]

I see a problem with the search functionality with some IMAP servers:
I have a mail account at gmx.de (international website: http://www.gmx.net), a
popular german freemail/webmail provider. I access my account via IMAP, and the
search function seems to be broken:
When I type something, i.e. the word "wizard" into the quicksearch field,
everything works fine, only the mails containing "wizard" in the subject are
shown. But if I use the search dialog to find all mails containing the same word
in the subject (it does not matter, if I search in one folder or all forlders of
the account), the search result contains every mail of the folder or account,
depending on the type of search.
I guess that has something to do with the capabilities of the IMAP server used
at gmx.de, because with my local Cyrus IMAP server, search works as it should,
but I think there should be a way to fix this, because Outlook Express is able
to do a proper search with this server, and why should Outlook Express be better
than Thunderbird ? ;-)
The IMAP Server is imap.gmx.net, I don't know if it is possible to check the
server for capabilities without being logged in, but I will help where I can to
fix this!

Comment 1

[Marcus Münch]

Sorry, I forgot the Thunderbird Version: I see this in 0.9, but I also noticed
that it happens with 0.8, on both Linux and Windows builds.

Comment 2

[Arun K Viswanathan]

I have noticed this behavior with IMAP servers at my place of work too. However,
I looked at the network traffic and here's what is being exchanged for one of my
searches (to or cc contains "arun" and body contains "thunderbird", match all -
for which I know there's only one match in my folder):

uid SEARCH UNDELETED OR HEADER TO "arun" HEADER CC "arun" BODY "thunderbird"
* SEARCH 55162 55164 55165 55167 55168 55176 55177 55181 55183
OK UID SEARCH completed

The "uid SEARCH" line is what Thunderbird sent and the "* SEARCH" line is the
response from the IMAP server with message numbers that match the search
criteria. According to the IMAP spec (http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3501.txt),
the syntax for OR is:
  OR <search-key1> <search-key2>
and AND is implicit in queries. So that query is fine and translates to:

(undeleted message) AND (to is "arun" OR cc is "arun") AND (body is "thunderbird").

But the response from the server is wrong. There's only message in my folder
that matches that query. So I think the IMAP server is at fault here.

BTW I tried this with version 1.0+ (20050303).

Comment 3

[Wolfgang Sailer]

Dear all!

Let me add a comment to this: My command spans an area a bit broader, so I
submitted this also as a separate Thunderbird bug(287056)
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=287056). There is also Seamonkey
bug numer 23249 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232409) describing
a similar, though not identical, problem. So, I beg for forgiveness if I cause
double-reporting of bugs now...

I have a problem with IMAP on the German ISP "GMX", very much the same as the
ones reported here. I use Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206) on Windows
XP SP2 prof. de.

I have 2 problems:
1) naming mailboxes
2) searching mailfolders

ad 1)
GMX seems to allow only mailboxes named "Aaaaa" i.e. starting with a capital
letter then only lower case letters and spaces allowed. I.e. "Old mails" would
be a valid name whereas "old Mails" would be not. If I create a mailfolder "old
Mails" TB displays it on the IMAP account as regular folder, called "old Mails".
However, if I try to open the mailfodler, i get an error message from TB:
---
ALERT: The command did not succeed. The mail server responded: SELECT No such
mailbox - "Old mail"
--- 
remarkably, I told TB to open the mailbox "Old mail" where instead it tried to
open "old Mail".

Then I restart TB again, and it liste 2 mailboxes, one called "Old mail" and the
other "old Mail". I can use the folder "Old mail" perfectly well, the problems
with the mailfolder "old Mail" are still as described above. When I log in to
the webmail service of GMX there is only one folder, "Old mails".

If I try to delete the mailfolder "old Mail" TB does indeed delete it, but
deletes the folder "Old mail" at the very same time, including its contents!!
VERY DISAPPOINTING BEHAVIOUR.

Q: Where is the problem here?
The GMX IMAP server also only permits the creation of a primary folder
hierarchy, i.e. I can only create folders with messages, but no subfolders.


ad 2)
The "search messages" function does not work with the GMX ISP.
If I search for a message, I get the error message from TB:
---
ALERT: The current command did not succeed: The mail server responded: SEARCH
Cannot search the criteria - unsupported argument: HEADER SUBJECT "test".
--- 

again, Q: Where is the problem?


I can use other IMAP accounts from other ISPs perfectly well, folder naming and
search function and all the rest.

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 232409 ***