288046 - provide multiple folder & location selection in advanced Search Messages - eg via picker

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[John Navas]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Thunderbird/1.0.2 (20050317)

RE: Thunderbird 1.0.2 (20050317) on Windows XP Pro SP2 (Mobile P4-2000)

I think the Edit -> Find -> Search Messages dialog in Thunderbird could benefit
from a substantial overhaul:

"Search for messages in:" could be implemented using a folders picker as in the
Saved Search Properties dialog ("Select the folders to search: Choose...") so
that disjoint folders can be searched for one search term, rather than just a
single hierarchy of subfolders. The workaround of creating a Saved Search (aka
Virtual) folder is clumsy.

Rather than just a single location (e.g., Subject) for a given search term, the
various locations could be implemented as checkboxes (somewhat like the folders
picker above) so that multiple locations (e.g., Sender, To, Cc, Body) could
easily be specified for a given search argument. The workaround of multiple
search terms of the same argument is clumsy, and (given the single all/any
switch) inflexible.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Edit -> Find -> Search Messages

Actual Results:  
Search Messages dialog as currently designed and implemented.

Expected Results:  
Enhanced dialog as described herein.

Comment 1

[irongut]

Bug is for Thunderbird, not Suite.

Comment 2

[Pete Gonzalez [:octogonz]]

*** Bug 323802 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Pete Gonzalez [:octogonz]]

Attachment: The Eudora "Find Messages" GUI

[Copied from bug 323802]

This screenshot illustrates the Eudora GUI for selecting a disjoint subset of folders.  Eudora was one of the first mail clients to support the "+"/"-" buttons for boolean searches, and IMO it has the fastest and best-designed search facility of any e-mail client I've used.  Thunderbird should just emulate the Eudora GUI rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Note: This screenshot also illustrates the "Headers" and "Anywhere" criteria, which are glaringly missing from Thunderbird's interface.

Comment 5

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Search improvements -> UI.

Comment 6

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Not a blocker.  The big important search thing that deserves the most effort in a Tb3 timeframe is our full-text indexing.

Comment 7

[Emil Ivanov]

I understand, but does that means it will search in all accounts?
Now is very unhandy if you have several accounts and you have to search in every one manually.

I am interested more in searching in all accounts until there is match, not choosing in which accounts to search for. Should i file new bug for that?

Comment 8

[Emil Ivanov]

Sorry the duplicates in this bug are for the same thing (searching in all accounts without selection) so new bug is not needed.

Comment 9

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Yes, full-text indexing intends to index (and search) the entire store.

Comment 11

[Anje]

copied comment from bug 1701497
Current situation for 'Find' > 'Search Messages' allows initial search on either a specific folder or on all folders on one account.
After using this on whole of one account and creating a 'Search Folder', it is then possible to choose any folder on any account to expand the search results.
But agree that you should not have to go through an intial process just to create the 'Search Folder' in order to expand initial search beyond either one folder or all folders on one account.
The current option 'Search for messages in' could be improved.

Comment 12

[Dr B W Darvell]

There are some deeper problems.
For example, a number of times I have searched using the Ctrl-K box, found a number of messages, but then using "Show results as list" there are clearly rather fewer hits than first shown. This makes it quite unreliable.

(In reply to Dan Mosedale (:dmose, :dmosedale) from comment #6)

The big important search thing that deserves the most effort in a Tb3 timeframe is our full-text indexing.
I would endorse that. At the moment the main search window will function, just slowly. I have seen a list that I think is complete, only to see the window some time later to find a lot more additions. It takes many minutes as it is. The progress bar is not meaningful; 'search complete' is clearly not true on occasions.