Search for archived emails by date, not keyword, in Thunderbird

I'm looking to be able to get a list off all emails by a certain date, no matter where they are in Thunderbird. I feel like this should be pretty simple, but:

date:02/08/2013

AND

02/08/2013

only return emails whose contents have the date, or part of the date, in them.

I tried to use this add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmailui/

but it doesn't have a global search, it only lets you search the mail in your current view.

No other addons I could find via Thunderbird's Addon search looked useful.

Nicholas Pickering

Posted 2013-02-19T16:19:09.323

Reputation: 223

Oh, I'm silly. I was able to open up the Archives folder and it has all the emails sorted by date. I tried to delete/answer this question - but I'm too fresh to do any of those things I guess. – Nicholas Pickering – 2013-02-19T16:32:49.420

Welcome to SuperUser! When you answer your own question, community policy is to write up what you did and then post it as an answer so that other's can benefit from it as well. – David – 2013-02-19T16:38:28.403

Yes, but it won't let me for 8 hours... – Nicholas Pickering – 2013-02-19T16:41:32.090

It seems you need either 15 rep, or a 8 hours delay. I'll quickly whip something up. – David – 2013-02-19T17:01:31.120

then why don't you just make a new question? – Sickest – 2014-02-10T18:08:35.777

Answers

To filter email by date, you can click the on blue icon with the bars under the search box. You can then click on a bar, month or year to refine your search further.

enter image description here

If you want to include all your email in the search, type your email address in the top bar, and then pick the drop down option that includes your main email to see all email that you have ever received. You can then refine this as per above.

enter image description here

David

Posted 2013-02-19T16:19:09.323

Reputation: 6 593

1You can only do this if you've entered a keyword to search for - I was looking to search in everything. – Nicholas Pickering – 2013-02-19T17:11:38.777

Sorry. The answer to my question ended up being much more simple than this. I just needed to open my "Archives" folder in the left panel, and it had all of my archived emails sorted by date. – Nicholas Pickering – 2013-02-19T17:13:51.930

That works, I had assumed that you wanted both a term and a date, but if you just want a date, the main window will work fine. – David – 2013-02-19T17:23:56.833

1See bounty, looking for a pure date search solution (no terms). – matt wilkie – 2014-02-10T18:01:29.197

@mattwilkie Found a way to do this, see above for details. – David – 2014-02-12T22:22:38.450

Thanks for the suggestion of searching for your own address. This will likely work for many, but not if you have more than one email address (me@example.com, enquiries@example.ca, etc...). – matt wilkie – 2014-02-15T00:02:39.267

You can use the dedicated Search dialog, not only the Quick Search Toolbar:

Menubar -> Edit -> Find -> Search Messages... (CTRL+SHIFT+F)

Then, select Local Folders or the appropriate account (see below how to search all folders/accounts), and fill in the Date criterion:

enter image description here

To extend this approach to really all folder, use the SavedSearchThemAll add-on for convenience.

Install the add-on and check the following in its preferences:
In the Search Messages dialog (first screenshot) press Save as Search Folder and save the search as e.g. Date. Now you have a new entry under your local folders.
Execute Menubar -> Tools -> Update search folders target.

Now the Date search should be done on all local, as well as all remote folders. (Don't let you fool, that the search is under the Local Folder tree.)
Finished, all mails on or before (according to your setting when saving the search) a specific date are listed in the main window, if you click the Date search in the tree pane
Once you've created the Date search, you only need to change the date via the Properties dialog to do a new global search:

mpy

Posted 2013-02-19T16:19:09.323

Reputation: 20 866

1Those 2 together are a good 80% solution, thanks! User experience would benefit greatly from having double click open the properties (and a date picker for selecting dates), but even without that this is better than a fake keyword search. ((Holding the bounty open for a few days to see if anything else comes up)) – matt wilkie – 2014-02-11T21:22:31.123

@mattwilkie I was surprised myself that no date picker was presented. However, what I was wondering in the first place: Isn't the beginning of your mail address (e.g. matt@) a good keyword for the global search? Because, according to the doc, "From address and To address" is searched. But of course, if you need to search multiple accounts... – mpy – 2014-02-12T08:57:59.877

You can use date:02/08/2013 to search for a specific date after installing the addon Expression Search.

xuhdev

Posted 2013-02-19T16:19:09.323

Reputation: 1 399