578151 - search no longer searches all fields. By default, I can't search for mail from specific people

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Alex]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6
Build Identifier: Search is insanely unintuitive

When I type a name into the search bar, thunderbird looks only for mail 'containing' the name and completely overlooks mail from that person. Is this not bizarre? Don't people typically search for mail from someone? Anyways, it's way annoying, same thing if you try and search by subject line. I'd much prefer the search bar to look at header elements rather than body text. It seems entirely counter-intuitive to search body text instead of a message's identifying characteristics, changes the behavior markedly from Thunderbird 2.0 and for these reasons, I've been using Outlook since... I'd really like to come back, won't you fix this for me so I can?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
0. Use IMAP server
1. Search for an email using sender's name or subject
2. Marvel at how the search tries to find these things INSIDE an email
3. 
Actual Results:  
0. Use IMAP server for your email
1. Search for an email using sender's name or subject
2. Marvel at how the search tries to find these things INSIDE an email

Expected Results:  
search ignores emails sent by person or subject queried and instead looks for these things in the body of emails

I would like the search to first and foremost search header elements such as sender or subject lines before body text because that's how i usually organize emails in my head, so if i wanna return to one with the search bar, usually i search for the subject and person that sent it

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

What version of TB are you using ? (3.1.x or 3.0.x )

Comment 2

[Alex]

Sorry for the rediculously long bug report. I think my problem stemmed from the fact that I was using Thunderbird on a school computer that was set to download my IMAP account to my local drive. Whenever I logged in, it would start downloading all emails in my account to the local drive. I didn't think this was normal behavior but the symptoms above may have been due to not all the messages having been downloaded and hence, the search may have been slow and not showing proper results. I've since turned off the caching and performance is now as expected. One question, why is it default to download imap messages to the hard drive? Isn't the point of IMAP so you don't have to do that? Anyways, I think it's not a problem with the search, just the caching at the time. 

Thanks for checking in though.

Comment 3

[Alex]

**Still happens on 3.0.0.4 (or something like that).

Actually I tried again today and the same result happened. Without caching, searching for someone who you receive mail from produces emails that "contain" that person's name in the body text of the email and not a list of emails from that person. I'm not sure if this is a search setting you can change.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

can you reproduce this using a current version of thunderbird?

if you are unable to reproduce, please close by setting stats to resolved, and resolution to WORKSFORME or another appropriate setting.

If you are able to reproduce, add new details, and a testcase if one does not already exist in the bug report.

Comment 5

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE due to lack of response to last question. If you feel this change was made in error please respond to this bug with your reasons why.