I'd suggest you ask in a Microsoft forum.

christ1 said

I'd suggest you ask in a Microsoft forum.

Ha ha ha ha! Now seriously, what do you think their answer will be? You guessed it right: check in the Mozilla forums. These kind of replies are not very helpful.

BTW, I did extensive searches before posting the question.

Why not use Thunderbird's own search?

finitarry said

Why not use Thunderbird's own search?

Again, that is not the point. TB's own search works (and it works well), but if it is supposed to work with Windows Search directly, why doesn't it work? Is it a known issue? Is it only me and everyone else has it working?

I hope this is silly question…but have you ticked the checkbox here?

Tools|Options|Advanced|General→Allow Windows Search to search messages

I will split the difference.

Does your profile contain thousands of mszeml files? In not turn on the windows search option.

If no, on the toolbar > Options > Advanced > general.

If Yes, ask in a Microsoft forum why said search is not working. I do not pretend to understand Windows 10. From what I see in this forum is it little better than a virus itself. So I will not speculate why it's search does not work if the files are there.

Please note that enabling windows search in options create a mozeml file for each and every email, just as maildir does, but the mozeml files are sans attachments. Personally I have the search disabled. I don't cope with having tens of thousands of useless files clogging up my profile. Just to support using a search option that I rarely find useful anyway

As far as I can see, and I am no expert, search in Windows 10, as exemplified by the magnifying glass in the Start Menu, doesn't offer to search the text of files. It seems very much centred on searching for files, presumably with the search term in their names.

Search was pretty dire in Windows 7; I'm not surprised to find it has apparently been dumbed down even further in W10.

If the OP cares to expand on how to use search to interrogate the contents of files then I'll be more than pleased to try it on Thunderbird messages.

Zenos said

I hope this is silly question…but have you ticked the checkbox here? Tools|Options|Advanced|General→Allow Windows Search to search messages

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I checked that option.

Matt said

I will split the difference. Does your profile contain thousands of mszeml files? In not turn on the windows search option. If no, on the toolbar > Options > Advanced > general. If Yes, ask in a Microsoft forum why said search is not working. I do not pretend to understand Windows 10. From what I see in this forum is it little better than a virus itself. So I will not speculate why it's search does not work if the files are there. Please note that enabling windows search in options create a mozeml file for each and every email, just as maildir does, but the mozeml files are sans attachments. Personally I have the search disabled. I don't cope with having tens of thousands of useless files clogging up my profile. Just to support using a search option that I rarely find useful anyway

I have not tried this solution, but your explanation fits the symptoms. You say that enabling the Windows Search causes TB to create ".wdseml" files for each email, in a maildir storage style. By default, TB creates the profiles in the %APPDATA% folder. And, by default, Windows Search does not index (actually, it excludes) that %APPDATA% folder.

That would explain why despite enabling the Windows Search, it could not find anything TB related.

As a I said at the beginning, I have moved to a maildir storage for emails and created a new profile directly under my user's home folder, so that takes care of it as well.

Lessons learned here: TB should give more freedom to the user when creating the default profile, and be more sensitive when choosing the location, if it wants to actually make the Windows Search work.

Thanks for your contribution, Mark.

Belay that.

Apparently, searching the text within files is an "advanced" option in W10. In any Windows Explorer ("File Manager") pane you can launch a search and under Advanced in the horrible ribbon you can tell it to search contents, and it seems more than willing to rummage through stored email messages.

You probably need to extend indexing to include the relevant folders to make it worth using.

The "exclusion" I see here seems to be about indexing, not searching per se. But it's easy enough the remove the exclusion.

Zenos said

Belay that. Apparently, searching the text within files is an "advanced" option in W10. In any Windows Explorer ("File Manager") pane you can launch a search and under Advanced in the horrible ribbon you can tell it to search contents, and it seems more than willing to rummage through stored email messages. You probably need to extend indexing to include the relevant folders to make it worth using.

Thanks for the tips, Zenos. I had Windows Search to index file contents as well. As explained in my previous reply to Mark, it was a matter of looking in the right folder.

I am just curious that, since, by default, TB saves the data in a location that, by default, Windows Search excludes from indexing, by default, searching from the Windows box would never work.

Thunderbird stores data where Microsoft guidance notes tell it to. Go figure.