Search Body of Emails in Local Folder (0 Results)
I haven't updated in quite some time, but finally updated Thunderbird to 115.7.0 (64-bit) on my Mac running Sonoma.
I've never had an issue until just now where any emails archived and stored on Local Folders no longer show any results when searching the Body using ⇧ ⌘ F (Shift, Command and F). Using the same search messages window for anything stored online is fine, but again Local Folders produce no emails even if I open an email, copy and paste a unique word from that email.
Is there something I need to do now to index my local folders and emails so they can search the body of them now (or a way to rebuild the offline email database)?
Thanks for your help.
All Replies (8)
Tried that this morning. Didn't seem to help. Found the global-messages-db.sqlite file going to my Library Folder and finding it in the Thunderbird folder and deleted it after closing Thunderbird. Waited a few mins, opened it back up and waited a few mins before doing a search.
But again anything that is IMAP it can find fine through a server search, but unfortunately Local Folder searching still broken and nothing showing up.
The reindexing could take all day. Especially if there are a lot of emails involved.
Well I just gave it another shot since it's been 9 hours and it's still not working. I'll check again in a few hours and report back here, but getting the feeling this isn't going to solve it.
Perhaps not.
right click on of the local folders, select properties and then the repair button. DO all the mails in the folder just disappear?
Hello again, want to first say I appreciate you replying and giving this a shot to help solve.
So tried this morning and still no go on the searching the Body to find emails.
Gave the Right Click on Folders, then Properties and hit the Repair Button. Waited for the Building Summary File for Local Folders to disappear, and then tried searching body for emails with no luck. Also the emails blinked away for like less than a half a second, but they did not fully disappear after doing the repair. So if you mean if it blinked and disappeared yes it did. If you mean something longer than no. Hope that makes sense.
The re-index process (repair) would have identified a corrupt store. The index would have returned only a partial or in other way incomplete listing of mail. It might even have not shown any mail at all. That latter is the most common outcome.
What exactly are you searching for? Numbers are a no no. As are most other non text criteria. So hence the question.
Searching for things like Peoples names that are mentioned in emails, or words like Order Confirmation in the body, Encyclopedia was one that I saw in an email and though was unique so hey that should show up.
Zip zero zilch when searching the body. Only thing that works for Local Folder search is email address (in the From field) or words in the Subject.
And again this all worked perfectly fine until I updated. So kind of brutal to lose this as I was archiving all emails from the previous year so my server IMAP box only had the current year. I started moving emails back from the past two years literally back to my server so I can at least search stuff recent. But if I can't find a fix soon, I may just have to look for other email clients.
Again I do appreciate your help trying to diagnose but quite strange and seems like I might be the only one experiencing this issue. LOL