349085 - Can't search on negative terms in Thunderbird's Quick Filter box with NOT or minus

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Peter C. Frank]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6

The "Quick Search" feature doesn't allow negative search terms, e.g., using the default quick search (FROM or SUBJECT contains), typing in "<SENDER> -<SUBJECT>" would return all emails from <SENDER> that do NOT contain <SUBJECT>>, or typing in "<WORD1> -<WORD2>" would return all emails containing <WORD1> that do NOT contain the <WORD2>.

This feature would come in quite handy when you're trying to find certain emails but know you can exclude certain others in the search.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type a search term with the minus sign into the Quick Search box.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Thunderbird returns no search results ("No messages were found fitting your search criteria").

Expected Results:  
Thunderbird should return a list of all emails NOT containing whatever words are inserting into the Quick Search box with a minus sign in front of it.

It would also be nice to have the same search abilities as the filters, e.g., in the search type, search for messages that do NOT contain .... <criteria>

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

on the order of bug 240454, which is targeted for thunderbird 3

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

valid request, and about time to consider implementing this basic feature

Comment 5

[larivact]

It is ridiculous that this got reported 8 years ago and it still isn't added yet.

Comment 6

[Jobu Tupaki]

(In reply to larivact from comment #5)
> It is ridiculous that this got reported 8 years ago and it still isn't added
> yet.

i want this feature as much as the next guy, but remember that Thunderbird developers are unpaid volunteers. you're always welcome to fork the project and contribute a patch -- but otherwise, please consider keeping your comments constructive and on-point with better understanding the problem. venting frustration is more appropriate for a personal forum like a blog or your social media network :]

Comment 7

[kie000]

(In reply to Reuben G. from comment #6)
> (In reply to larivact from comment #5)
> > It is ridiculous that this got reported 8 years ago and it still isn't added
> > yet.
> 
> i want this feature as much as the next guy, but remember that Thunderbird
> developers are unpaid volunteers. you're always welcome to fork the project
> and contribute a patch -- but otherwise, please consider keeping your
> comments constructive and on-point with better understanding the problem.
> venting frustration is more appropriate for a personal forum like a blog or
> your social media network :]

^ Flamebait. We're not all developers, 99% of people wouldn't have a clue how to do this.

Search can be utterly useless without being able to negate hundreds of false results sometimes.