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Re: Thunderbird message searching bug / Betterbird succeeds

  • Subject: Re: Thunderbird message searching bug / Betterbird succeeds
  • From: Jean-Francois Messier <jfmessier [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com>
  • Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2026 10:18:53 -0400
.....follow-up:

Once I closed all instances of Thunderbird and Betterbird, I restarted it with only the -p parameter, and I found one of the options actually reloads all my emails. I am actually replying to the list using Betterbird. Let's see how it goes..........

JFM

On 2026-07-05 10:16, Jean-Francois Messier via linux wrote:
Assuming that BB uses the profiles from ~/.thunderbird, and looking within this directory, I see that the same profile directory names actually exist. I tried to point to each of those, one by one, and some (more than one) returned me an error message, something about either the profile being in use, or being a newer version. In both cases, my only options were to either quit, or create a new profile. For now, I just quit. I will try closing all instances of Thunderbird and retry those profile directories.

JFM

On 2026-07-05 10:08, Nash JC - NCF via linux wrote:
Yes. I got the donations request once. I use profiles (Mary and I like to be able to take just one machine on vacations, and I also have some special emails for clubs etc.), so get the chooser each time. If I'm correct, both BBird and TBird remember which one was used last so is just an Enter on the keyboard. Betterbird seems to use the .thunderbird profiles OK. And I've tried switching between Thunderbird and Betterbird without issues (so far!!!). From your experiment, it seems Betterbird doesn't want to look in .betterbird, though there's probably a way to force that.

JN


On 2026-07-05 10:03, Jean-Francois Messier via linux wrote:
I tried this (actually -P) as well as --profile. the -P prompts me for a profile from a short list. AS for the --profile option, I tried to copy the .thunderbird entire subtree to something like .betterbird then pointing to it with the -- profile param, and it comes with an empty profile. quitting and then checking in ~/.betterbird, I see names such as 7d8f92j.default, 2j38djf.default-release, etc..... names which I recognize from the prompts when starting BB with only the -p param.

Not sure how those profiles work under either Thunderbird or BetterBird......

I also noticed than when I start it, it opens another tab in my browser for Betterbird site, asking for donations.

JFM

On 2026-07-04 09:20, Nash JC - NCF via linux wrote:
Oops. I forgot that I started from terminal using

betterbird -p

to point to the profiles.

JN

On 2026-07-04 09:17, Jean-Francois Messier via linux wrote:
Strange.......... When I opened it, it asked me for my first email account info. I guess I did not run any install, but just ran the executable once the archive was extracted............................... But thanks for tis. I will do an actual installation and see. I noticed there is a script on the BBird site as well.

Thanks again !!!

JFM

On 2026-07-04 09:14, Nash JC - NCF via linux wrote:
Thanks for pointer to bug.

Last night I happened to open TBird on a secondary machine and on a whim tested the search and did NOT get the problem. So maybe some weird configuration or corruption issue. I didn't check version numbers (yet), but do allow updates as soon as they appear on notification panel.

However, I plan to keep using BetterBird for a while.

To answer JFM, I didn't have to do anything to get my setup active in BetterBird. It doesn't set up a .betterbird directory but actually goes to the .thunderbird one and uses profile(s)
there.

JN

On 2026-07-04 05:57, Ron via linux wrote:
Nash JC - NCF via linux wrote on 2026-07-03 12:04:
I don't know if non-Linux versions of Thunderbird also suffer from this bug -- in searching for it I was unable to find anything I thought relevant.

This might not be entirely relevant, but an old TB search bug:

 > have global search support exact matching (disabling stemming). ex: Searching for 'wedding' finds 'weds'

 > Bug 752844 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844> Opened 14 years ago Updated 3 months ago


I really thought there was a comment saying they'd be working on rebuilding the search, but I can't find it now.

Every episode of Thundercast (Thunderbird podcast), I hope to hear something about this. Still waiting.



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