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Thunderbird has an advanced email search functionality which can be opened with Ctrl + Shift + F. One of the available search conditions is simply 'Attachment'.

Problem is that I get no results, even when I have verified that email and its attachment net1.jpg exists. Folder is set correctly. Search from subfolders checkbox is also set.

  1. Search with Attachment + includes + net1.jpg fails.
  2. Search with Attachment + is + net1.jpg fails.
  3. Search with Attachment + starts with + net1.jpg fails.
  4. Search with Attachment + ends with + net1.jpg fails.
  5. I also tried above with only leading net1 or ending jpg part. Those all also failed.

Question: What am I doing wrong? Have I misunderstood how to use this search option? Wiki help page is doesn't give any info on this.

I am using Thunderbird 60.7.2 (32-bit).

Note 1: I am using localized version of Thunderbird, so my translated texts may not be 100% correct.

Note 2: I tried using add-on in this answer, but unfortunately it's not compatible with my TB version.

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2 Answers 2

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Upon further investigation it looks like answer is: It doesn't.

The Attachment option I had seems to be custom option that has been created in the past. But there is no email header option called Attachment to which it could match to.

File name of the attachment seems in Content-Type field. But unfortunately this is part of the later header group in the multi-part message, and it seems that Thunderbird can only do searches on the first group of headers which has different Content-Type field.

So at the moment there is no way to search attachments by file name in Thunderbird.

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Using same Thunderbird version on Windows, the criteria name in English is "Attachment Name/type".

At first, this option seemed to be completely non-functional. Whether I set it to "contains" or to "doesn't contain", there was nowhere that I could type in anything to search.

I then hit the + button, and the same search criteria was duplicated below, this time with the text field. So I deleted the criteria without text field, then entered "png" and pressed "Search", and it then went ahead and happily listed all sort of messages, with or without attachments of any kind.

I suggest reporting it as bug on the Thunderbird Forums. This criteria is obviously seriously bugged.

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  • Unfortunately I cannot seem to be able to reproduce the same effect. Search term I think you are talking about never gives me the text field. But you are right regardless; search function seems work weirdly sometimes.
    – user694733
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 7:26

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