[Bug 885542] Re: thunderbird email search should begin with the most recent email then progress to the oldest (what the user is searching for is more likely to be in recent rather than older emails)

Sun Nov 6 22:15:56 UTC 2011

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On 2009-01-22T02:25:29+00:00 Pawel-pohl wrote:

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5 FirePHP/0.2.1
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.17

I have migrated to Thunderbird from Outlook because Outlook's search
feature was too slow. I have imported a database with 2 years worth of
emails. Thunderbird's search is faster, but it starts with the *oldest*
messages; that means that for full body searches (ex.: body contains:
"new ftp password") I have to wait 5+ minutes to get to newer (more
relevant) messages.

I know that I can limit the messages to, say, last 100 days or 400 days;
however, I usually don't know how many days ago the relevant message was
sent. Besides, that is an ugly and non-elegant solution.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get a big email database
2. Start either a simple or advanced search using "body contains".
Actual Results:  
The search takes a long time (which is OK given the data size), result list is updated on-the-fly (which is very good), but oldest results appear first (which is undesired).

Expected Results:  
The results appear starting from most recent messages.

I am doing a local search, not an IMAP search.

I am marking this bug/feature request as "major", because it makes one
of the most used functions (search) unusable in my case.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/0

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On 2009-02-13T08:54:45+00:00 Ludovic-mozilla wrote:

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 439697 ***

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/1

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On 2009-03-06T12:58:05+00:00 Ludovic-mozilla wrote:

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get a big email database
2. Start either a simple or advanced search using "body contains".
Actual Results:  
The search takes a long time (which is OK given the data size), result list is
updated on-the-fly (which is very good), but oldest results appear first (which
is undesired).

Expected Results:  
The results appear starting from most recent messages.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/2

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On 2009-06-09T07:10:22+00:00 Pawel-pohl wrote:

Ludo(In reply to comment #1)
> 
> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 439697 ***

This is a completely different bug. Note that I am not complaining about
the ordering of the display list. I am complaining about the order in
which the messages are *searched*.

I am very disappointed to see this bug unresolved for so long. I have
just come back to this issue after trying to find another message from
three weeks ago. I entered the search term, and the search started about
5 minutes ago. I managed to navigate here and find this thread and write
this comment, and the search result page is only half-way through 2008.
Please, please change the order in which the messages are *searched*.
Searching is not an instantaneous procedure, it takes a lot of time,
which is why I presume the search results list is updated live.

I marked this as "polish" because, while I am ignorant to the underlying
code, I suspect that it will only require a small change in the
searching code. Correct me if I am wrong.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/3

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On 2009-06-09T08:17:19+00:00 Ludovic-mozilla wrote:

Search is being completely rewritten in TB 3.0 - the new functionality
should be released pretty soon - we will make announces mdat and on
blogs - give it a go and tell us if it solves your issue.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/4

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On 2009-06-09T09:50:19+00:00 Pawel-pohl wrote:

Thanks, I will make sure to update as soon as Tbird 3 is out!

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/5

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On 2011-04-05T17:21:53+00:00 Euryalus-0 wrote:

*** Bug 645984 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/6

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On 2011-04-05T17:23:21+00:00 Euryalus-0 wrote:

*** Bug 647828 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/7

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On 2011-04-29T09:13:43+00:00 Emilis Dambauskas wrote:

I am using Thunderbird 3.1.8 on Ubuntu and this is not solved yet.

I see this bug registered for version 2.0. Should I register a new bug?

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/8

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On 2011-11-04T09:34:15+00:00 Mkmelin+mozilla wrote:

*** Bug 699392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/thunderbird/+bug/885542/comments/16

** Changed in: thunderbird
       Status: Unknown => Confirmed

** Changed in: thunderbird
   Importance: Unknown => Wishlist

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Title:
  thunderbird email search should begin with the most recent email then
  progress to the oldest (what the user is searching for is more likely
  to be in recent rather than older emails)

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