353564 - Quicksearch filters and "Search Messages" doesn't work across folders/accounts

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Pascal Blancquaert]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

In order to better organise/clean emails and reduce redundancy,
the search function should allow (optionally?) to find matching
emails not just in the current folder but across all folders ...
even across all accounts (e.g. you may have matching/double 
occurrences in multiple inboxes)

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
In showing the matching results, also display additional column indicating 
in which accoount/folder the email resides.

Comment 1

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

You can set a saved search across accounts and folders as a search folder and get the same result. First create a saved search folder. Then right click, choose properties, then click Choose at the "Select the folders to search:". To get the same functionality in the normal search the pull down tree of accounts/folders would need a ui similar to that used in saved searches. In fact, that would be a good addition I think.

Confirming as a request for enhancement.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Suite bug 131438.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 314316 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[ovidiu]

bug 353835 should depend on this one (and this should block that ..) if not consider even dupin 353835

Comment 6

[Mitra Ardron]

Is this problem still being considered. 

Search in TB is particularly poor - compared to other mail programs, specifically.

* Inability to search across multiple accounts, i.e. I remember I got an email about xxx but haven't a clue what email address (i.e. account) it was sent it to. 

* Ability to search the entire message easily, currently you typically have to enter three places to search for emails with a person (From, To/Cc, Body) - you have to search the "Body" in case for example you've forwarded the email and deleted the original.  

* Searching within a folder "Entire Message" is labelled incorrect - only searches "Body", I know the difference, but I bet lots of people are just frustrated that it doesn't work like they expect.

* Lack of integration with Spotlight.

I'm sure there are individual bugs posted on all of these, but overall they add up to search functionality in TB being poor.

Comment 7

[ovidiu]

(In reply to comment #6)
> * Inability to search across multiple accounts, i.e. I remember I got an email
> about xxx but haven't a clue what email address (i.e. account) it was sent it
> to. 
> 
A workaround for cross acc/folders is by file/new/saved search with selection..

Anyway, the new global database [gloda] developing for tb3 is clearly gonna solve most and even bring some more elegant and simple methods.

Comment 8

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

see bug 474701 for the new search entry based on the exptoolbar, backed by gloda, sponsored by the children, brought to you by the community :)

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

FTR, "Search all Messages" (aka gloda global search) in it's current shape does NOT solve this bug (though it provides some relief).
We still don't have any way of cross-folder/-accounts filtering, and we can't select multiple folders/accounts when doing an advanced / more specific search with "Search Messages" dialogue (there is a separate bug for that).