How can I sort by the receiving address (not just "recipient") in Thunderbird?

Question

I have several aliases used with one account, e.g. [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail] and so on.

I'd like to sort and group based on which address was used to receive a message, but the recipient field appears to be based on the sender's information, so it can get all kinds of values like

• [e-mail]
• "[e-mail]"
• "[e-mail]", "[e-mail]"
• "My Name" <[e-mail]>
• My Name

Needless to say, these don't sort correctly. I'd want all of the above to wind up in the same bucket. I've looked through the other fields I could sort on, but none seem to look at solely the receiving address.

Is there any way to accomplish this? Preferably without bugging my friendly neighborhood sysadmin :)?

Answer 1

Assuming you have one inbox into which all the various aliases are delivered, you could set up one search folder per alias, with the search configured as:

Then just "Save as Search Folder" and name each folder accordingly, i.e. "Inbox - [e-mail]", &c., and when you want to see messages received for a given alias, select that alias's "inbox" search folder.

If you're also interested in enabling conversation threading, you should be able to get that to work as well. To do so, choose "Match any of the following", and add a second search row configured as "From", "contains", and whatever From address you use for that alias; depending on how you've got things set up, that might be the alias address, or it might be your primary address; enter whichever is appropriate.

Then, once you click "Save as Search Folder", you'll have the option to select multiple folders to search; if you include your sent messages folder in the search, and then enable message threading in the search folder (View menu -> Sort By -> Threaded while the folder is selected), you should get the desired result. (I haven't tried this myself, so not absolutely certain it will work, but I see no reason why it shouldn't.)