So for the past few days I have been stuck in Vancouver with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Well…. that would have been true had I not discovered the Mozilla Messaging Vancouver office and the great people inside. They set me a challenge, and I passed with flying colours. This challenge was to tell you about the great new “Quick Filter” toolbar in Thunderbird 3.1.
So maybe a short history?
After the release of Thunderbird 3.0 the guys here at Mozilla Messaging re-examined the “Quick Search” feature from Thunderbird 2. It was fast but somewhat opaque, but it did allow people to find messages within the current folder. The team then went away and did all their homework (with no excuses about dogs eating it!) and found out that people loved this feature and they decided to make it even better.
This is why you now have the marvel of the Quick Filter toolbar.
Update: I have disabled comments for this post as it they are being used merely as support requests and (all be it constructive) criticisms. For help and support please head to support.mozillamessaging.com. You are free to have your opinions and express them…. however this post is not really the right place to do so.
Nice one! Updating to 3.1 now
ok. question!
I want my inbox only to show messages I tagged with a star OR unread messages. Is that possible at all? I want an OR and not only an AND.
Would be peeerfect to keep my inbox tidy.
(Also btw the scrolling in the left frame with the Email boxes became really laggy since the update)
Thanks, Tobi
Okay, if you want to do this permanently then you will need to set up a proper filter however, if you want to do this with quick filters then I am afraid you are out of luck. It is possible with full on filters however then you can right click on your inbox folder and apply the filters you need.
Fuzzy! thanks for your response.
I haven’t found out how-to use full-filters though to just “hide” a message, I can only move them into a different folder, but thats “sorting”, which I don’t want to do there.
Also, full-filters seem not to work in the actual inbox-overview (I’m running like 8 email accounts)
Well I guess I’m not in luck here. Another thing I need is “labels” like in Gmail, the labels currently just color the email-line, but that’s not helpful, Gmail ads a clear label like “mozilla” right in front of the message.
I hope you are well, and have a great time in Vancouver!
This isn’t really the best forum for support, and I am afraid I am not a Thunderbird guru. I can however point you in the right direction for more… and better help. Head to http://support.mozillamessaging.com and the lovely people there will be able to answer all your questions.
Take a look at the Views>Messages>Customize option – can set one up on your inbox folder to achieve this.
Awesome!
I have my mom, who is in her 60′s, on Thunderbird and upgraded her from 2.0 to 3.0 and the search has thoroughly confused her and often didn’t give her results that were helpful. So thanks for putting it back!
Are we able to include user (usability?) testing for future releases to avoid such situations?
This is a truly awful idea and I hope the dev team sees sense and undoes it ASAP.
The interface now takes up more room, is more clunky and more confusing than the TB 2 version.
I can’t filter by ‘To’ in ‘Sent items’!
The search box is not seen in vertical layout. It is more of a problem that I have to change the layout whenever I want to search for a message. Frankly, I did not like the feature.
Totally annoying.
Rarely do I need to do a global search — usually it’s just looking for ‘sender’ — or, in other words, a ‘filter’ search.
Now unfortunately, the ‘filter’ search is no longer part of the main navigation. Even worse, there is no way to add it through ‘Customize…’
Not good.
This is why quick filters is useful. It allows you to search for sender with single quick and easy search without taking you from the folder you are viewing
Regarding this last note, Fuzzy Fox: Can the Quick Filters work globally, or do they only work on each folder individually? Just like LeoRobertKlein, I also generally just want to search for ALL messages from xxxperson, no matter where they are. I have over 50 folders, some nested 3-deep.
If I use the top global Search field, it brings up a GMail-like list of potential results, but doesn’t tell me Location. I then have to click “Open as list” and then additionally select “location” from the right column dropdown, to see where they are!
I’ve tried to find a Mozilla page that tells how to customize the Search Results. Any thoughts?
unfortunately I don’t know the answer, the best place to find out would be at support.mozillamessaging.com they should be able to help you out there, and, if it is not able to, then you should be able to put it in as a feature request.
Thanks FF for your advice!
OMG, the qickfilter “update” was a downgrade in performance for me. I am completly annoyed, not even the Unified Search plugin can help me. I want the drowdown list back!
I used to type in the name, nick or email adress of a sender in a filtered or non-filtered account, virtual folder or real IMAP folder and simply FOUND the mail I was looking for. Now, I have to use the totally un-ergonomic and completly slow global search if I want to find a mail which just came in some two days ago!
I like it so much I am downgrading to version 2. It is over-complicated and hides my e mails. I don’t need it, don’t want it and nowhere can I find how to get rid of the b***** thing.
Mick Beaman
An additional disadvantage is that one could use just the keyboard to make changes in TB2 search bar (i.e., to shift from searching “Sender” field to searching “To” field, etc.) by using just alt-down arrow, but now in TB3 even with this quick filter bar, there is no equivalent key-board functionality. Is this an ill-thought-out upgrade or what?
I HATE quickfilter. Out. Go. Let me make my own decisions. I’m going back to Thunderbird 2 and removing any update options. WHy can’t these people leave well enough alone?
Greetings:
I too am having considerable problem – it seems as if it does way too much for me. How do I go back to the old system? I guess I am a geezer (63) and just don’t have the time to figure out all of the whistles and bells. I just want to type in a customer’s name and have their emails collected in front of me. Can you tell me how to go back? Please send me a solution to my email address.