Search through all subfolders of main 'Local Folders' fails
Ever since I updated to Thunderbird ver 128.4.2 esr, I can no longer do a global search by electing to search "Local Folders" and include all subfolders in the search. For example, as a test case, if I search for all messages dated after 1/1/2024, no messages in my "Inbox" folder are listed. It is true that of the 20 or so subfolders of "Local Folders", there is one subfolder named "Misc". Messages in "Misc" and its subfolders that meet the 1/1/2024 test criterion are found and listed, but other subfolders of "Local Folders" are ignored. Instead, the search engine remains hung in a "....Searching" state until I manually close the search.
But also ... if I choose to explicitly name any one of the subfolders of "Local Folders" as the root folder of a search (and "include all subfolders" contained in that root, the test case above finds all messages in the named subfolder and it's subordinate subfolders.
Bottom line ... I have a lot of subfolders and sometimes I've forgotten where I have stored a particular message. In a pile of messages decades deep, this problem has become a major disability. Someone please help!
Some facts that might be important.
I had hoped the problem might go away with subsequent Thunderbird updates. I've updated my mac to TBird 128.5.2esr now: but I still have the problem
I'm still running the latest version of Big_Sur on my mac. (I don't have this problem on a laptop that's running a later version of MacOS)
I have a lot of filters that automatically move incoming messages to my myriad of subfolders. The filter engine appears to continue to work correctly implying that, the filter engine knows how to find all of the subfolders of "Local Folders" even though the search engine doesn't.
Összes válasz (2)
Thanks Matt - I had a feeling that it was a search index problem, but didn't know how to repair the index. The article you cited looks very promising. I'll answer back here when I get a result on the index rebuild.