2) Expression Search NG might solve your search issues: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/expre...
There’s a major internal message storage rework project happening in Thunderbird, which should fix this once completed. You can try it in some beta builds, but of course, it’s still beta and isn’t compatible with some plugins yet. Most notably, the TBSync plugin, which provides Microsoft Outlook integration, doesn’t support it at this stage.
It defaults to the bizarre Gnome look (no native controls, toolbar buttons haphazardly strewn through the title bar), but you can change it in the preferences if you hate that as much as I do.
I have a relatively niche use case where thunderbird would no longer find my smime certificate on my smart card. But only in the compose/send UI, not in settings.
While I understand not many people are doing this, it also... Used to work, and I would have thought that detecting regressions in X.509 cert validation should be well covered by tests.
In comparison, evolution works.
My only note with that is the caldav and exchanges internal handling of event invites will fight with each other, so don't try to accept invites from within your imap mail client.
Maybe I'm missing what you're trying to do, but doesn't Ctrl-Shift-k "search" (called filter) on a per-folder basis? Testing for myself, I can filter by the basics, including body, and have it filter on a my focused folder
You can donate to Thunderbird in general. Right on the homepage of Thunderbird mobile [1], is a donation link. [2] Unlike donations on mozilla.org, where the funds go to Mozilla Foundation (and not to Mozilla Corporation, which is the one developing Firefox), the donations on thunderbird.net go to funding Thunderbird on all the platforms that the Thunderbird team works on.
Content advisory: longish rant ahead.
I have 4 email accounts: 2 Gmail, 1 Outlook, and 1 ProtonMail. I also use Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar. The reason I switched to Thunderbird was to manage them all in one uniform UI instead of keeping 6 open tabs.
I tried hard to love it, but after about 6 months, I am ready to give up. The main annoyance is that I cannot see sent and received messages in a single thread. I know this feature is coming soon, but I do not know how long to wait.
The second problem is that Thunderbird’s search, frankly, sucks. For example, while focused on a folder, if I start a search, it doesn't automatically narrow it to that folder; it searches across all my mail. I've noticed that when I need to find something, I open the Gmail web interface.
Finally, there are bugs. Most of them are relatively minor, but combined, they ruin my user experience. There are strange calendar event reminders that will not go away, bugs when event modifications do not sync to the server, and the most bizarre bug: when I reply to my own message, it sets the FROM field to one of the recipients, making it look like I’m faking someone’s email. Sometimes, when I reply to an HTML-heavy message, the editor in my reply starts in white font on a white background, so I cannot see what I’m typing until I change it. Etc.
I do not want to belittle the hard work all the developers put into Thunderbird. It’s a very complex piece of open-source software that does many good things. It just seems to fall a little short.
So, I am seriously contemplating giving up and going back to the web interfaces for my respective email accounts.