Missing Content From Global Search

[thayerst]

My global search was recently very slow so I did a rebuild of the Global Database as per instructions I found online. Now it seems that many emails that I previously had under global search are missing, i.e. when I type in an email address of some people it comes up in the global search, and for others it is now gone. Is it possibly that the Global Index was not indexed properly or it did not finish?

Any help would be appreciated, as I use Thunderbird for sales and use it as a tool to see who I have contacted and who I have not.

[DanRaisch]

It's possible that the index is not valid now, or it may have been invalid previously. In other words, unless you specifically opened a messages listed in the Global Search results, it may not have actually been present but only appearing in the search results because the index was not up to date. You can try rebuilding the index again by closing Thunderbird and deleting (or renaming) the file global-messages-db.sqlite, then launching the program and allowing time for the index to rebuild. How long that will take depends on the size of the message store.
If your account is set up as an IMAP account, there may be issues with completion of indexing if the server limits Thunderbird's time or speed of access.

[thayerst]

thanks, what i'm looking for specifically are sent items, who i've sent to and what's been sent etc. i deleted a number of sent items from my folders previously and before rebuilding the search, it would still show up this email address (even if it wasn't in my sent - i'd click on that name and nothing would come up).

is rebuilding the global search again the only option? is it possible that this could take days if there is a high amount of emails?

[DanRaisch]

I don't know how long it might take. How many is a "high amount of emails?
How is the account set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP? Find out using menu path Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.

[thayerst]

I have both gmail which is IMAP and yahoo which is POP.

generally what's happened is that if i type in an email address in the global search it will come down in the cache, however some are not coming down, people i know that i have contacted.

[DanRaisch]

Again, I don't know how long it will take to completely rebuild the Global Search cache file. As a suggestion, delete the file in the evening, retire for the night and let it run until you must use the system the next day. I can't imagine that it would takes days to rebuild but some hours may be necessary, particularly with an IMAP account in the mix, making Internet connection speed a factor in the process.

[thayerst]

Thanks - just one more question - if I interrupt the rebuild (e.g. turn off my computer) will this affect the rebuild? How will I know when it is finished?

[DanRaisch]

Interrupting the rebuild could result in a corrupted file that would not find any search results. I'd say just leave the computer running and Thunderbird loaded for at least 12 hours, 24 is that would not be a problem for other reasons.