The problem
Thunderbird 3 provides a new feature that allows a global search of all emails. This however has two disadvantages:
- If there is large number of mails, indexing can take a long time and require a lot of storage space.
- The ability to quickly search in the current folder is eliminated.
Now you can disable the global search – in the settings under Advanced – General – activate Global Search and Message Indexing. The only problem is that this setting is partly ignored.
The cause
An error in Thunderbird.
The solution
First reactivate the global search and then restart Thunderbird. Then deactivate the search and restart Thunderbird again. Now Thunderbird behaves like in version 2 and the search field searches only in the current folder.