Search for EXACT word?

[tanstaafl]

Classic search found a notification of this thread in a inbox folder when I searched for "subject" "contains" "exact". It didn't find any for exacta or exactly or exacts or exaact or exactt . So that seems to confirm that stemming doesn't occur in classic search.

The problem you complain about in your last post isn't due to stemming being enabled. That would return extra unwanted search results. You got just the opposite, not as many as you thought it should have returned. Unless you know for sure that two of the messages met that criteria, or think its due to a corrupt folder, the most likely explanation is human error.

[ACFairbanks]

Hi,

You wrote, in part, "Unless you know for sure that two of the messages met that criteria," but I believe that I had explained that I do know that, for sure.

After searching, and finding a single message that contained the word "informative," I found in two different folder, and read, two different messages that contained the word "informative." Of course, I may have made other errors, but it really is not very likely that what I've just described (and observed twice) never happened.

All the best,

A.C.

[tanstaafl]

How can an exact match be due to stemming? Stemming means include fuzzy/non-exact matches in the search results too. Every match it found was exact . It sounds like you didn't uncheck "Search subfolders" and it found additional exact matches, which you didn't expect.

Now if it didn't find the exact match in the currently selected folder that you expected it to (it just found it in 2 child folders), that might be due to a bug. But it would not be an example of stemming. i.e. if its a bug, its a different type of bug.

[ACFairbanks]

Hi,

To whom are you directing your comments?

Perhaps I am misinterpreting something, but:

I am the OP. I don't know what stemming is, and I'm pretty sure that I have never used the word in my life.

Am I the person to whom you are directing your comments about "stemming."

Many thanks,

A.C.

[tanstaafl]

"Am I the person to whom you are directing your comments about "stemming.""

Yes. I explained that the problem you were running into was due to stemming in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14811311 (my fifth post in this thread). Stemming is a technique used by search engines to automatically also include close matches in the search results, so that they are a mixture of exact and close matches. Your problem is due to the developers not providing a way to disable stemming.

By the way, it looks like only global search uses stemming. One of the comments about a add-on for the quick filter bar being a possible workaround was misleading as the quick filter bar doesn't appear to support stemming. That comment was made 2 years ago, perhaps things changed.

[eisneun]

it seems to me that the OP is not really in the quick filter bar. he says he uses Ctrl+K, this selects the search box on the mail toolbar. to open the quick filter bar, you have to either click the words Quick Filter on the mail toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+K. now when you start to type in the actual quick filter bar, the additional filters of sender recipient subject body will appear. see:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/qu ... er-toolbar

[ACFairbanks]

Hi, OP here,

I'm about to head out for some travel.

On my return I may be able to experiment further.

But, I can tell you with certainty that know where the Quick Filter bar is to be found, and it says CNTL-SHIFT-K on it. I also know where to find the Clobal Search bar, and that one greets me with the label CNTL-K.

Beyond that, I will have to re-read the thread when I am able, to see if in a particular description here, I might have mixed 'em.

All the best, and sincere thanks,

A.C.

[ACFairbanks]

Hi again OP here,

A bit more thought, - and a question:

I know that there are three search tools - Let's call 'em CTRL-K, CTRL+SHIFT+K, and CTRL+SHIFT+F.

If I am correct that you believe that one of those three should be able to search through all the messages I have in all the folders in TB, and then can locate those that contain a particular word, without also locating words that are similar to it, can you please tell me which of the three search tools I listed above will do that?

(I'll try that tool, and might need further assistance to get it working for me as I have described.)

Sincere thanks,

A.C.

[tanstaafl]

"If I am correct that you believe that one of those three should be able to search through all the messages I have in all the folders in TB, and then can locate those that contain a particular word, without also locating words that are similar to it, can you please tell me which of the three search tools I listed above will do that?"

None will. CTRL-K (global search) will search all folders in all accounts, but will also locate words that are similar to the word. CTRL+SHIFT+K (quick filter bar) will only find exact matches, but is limited to searching the current folder. CTRL+SHIFT+F (classic search) comes the closest as that will find just exact matches in the current folder and any child folders. But its limited to searching just the current account and is not a good fit for accounts like Outlook where several important folders are not child folders of the inbox.

If you only need to search a limited number of folders you could define a virtual folder (using saved searches per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search) and use either CTRL+SHIFT+K or CTRL+SHIFT+F with it. Your virtual folder could include the contents of various folders in several accounts . It doesn't care whether they're child folders or not. If you include just folders in IMAP accounts the performance should be good, as Thunderbird offloads the searching to the IMAP server. If it includes many folders in POP accounts or "Local Folders" it can become very slow as Thunderbird will have to fetch all of the messages, build a search index and only then search for the messages using the search index. That is time consuming. The reason global search is fast is because it builds the search index beforehand (using a background process) so its ready to do the actual search when you tell it to.

I have nine accounts but rarely use CTRL-K (global search) because most of my mail is in one IMAP account, neatly organized in a folder hierarchy. So I typically use CTRL+SHIFT+K (quick filter bar) , and once in a while use CTRL+SHIFT+F (classic search) when I'm not certain I know what folders the messages are in. Some people tend to keep most mail in their inbox (never organize it). In that case either CTRL+SHIFT+K (quick filter bar) or CTRL+SHIFT+F (classic search) will work fine if you want only exact matches. Some others have their mail scattered across multiple accounts and / or have folder hierarchies where many of their messages are not in child folders of the inbox. That makes CTRL-K (global search) the obvious search method. Unfortunately, its also the only one that will return some non-exact matches.

The point I'm trying to make is which search method you use depends a lot upon how you store your mail. It sounds like you regularly want to do exact searches of multiple folders in multiple accounts. The obvious search method for that scenario - CTRL-K (global search) - won't do what you want since there currently is no way to restrict the search results to just exact matches. You might be able to work around that by creating a virtual folder and using one of the other search methods with it instead. But then you might have to deal with other issues such as identifying what account the search results are in (you can customize the columns to add one identifying the account), performance issues, etc. and its never going to be as clean as solution as just using CTRL-K (global search).

[Synthezoid]

Try via classic search that tanstaafl mentioned: Edit |Find | Search messages (or Ctrl+Shift+F)

It giveS you a more robust dialog for controlling your searches.

By "robust", did you mean, "Won't even let you enter search criteria until you've told it in advance which folder or account the email you're searching for is in, which, if you knew, you obviously wouldn't need a search feature to find it, now, would you"? Because that's how it's (totally uselessly) working on my end.

Why did they even spend time building a "search" feature that first has to be told where the email you're searching for is??? I don't know, that's why I need to search for it!

[LIMPET235]

@Synthezoid...

Why post to a thread that died on "Tue 9th Oct 2018"...?

No one will be interested any more.

Locking this relic.