Comment 161 for bug 119899

Yes, I saw your comment (Comment 58)

> "If the developers don't want to pre-index all the headers of every email, then I can only suggest that when a user adds a custom header to search with, that this action prompts a request to automatically reindex all the email in the persons account. Alternatively just get the program to re-download the headers of each email as it searches"

This just doesnt seem feasible to me. Imagine an account that has a few hundred thousand emails spread throughout 50 or more folders. And then a user that just added a new custom header with a view of doing a search on the folder (example) "DEALT_2014" is now prompted (or worse, automatically FORCED to wait for) his thunderbird client to cycle through all 50+ folders, rebuilding them and re-downloading those hundreds of thousands emails again. It could take hours (being server, network and machine environment dependant). And after all he just wants to find that ONE or TWO emails he knows exists in 'DEALT_2014' (that contains only 200 emails). It would have been better for him to simply manually choose to Rebuild the folder 'DEALT_2104' - taking a few seconds and getting his search results he is looking for as quick as possible.

Is it really that hard to do 'right-click - properties - Repair Folder'? Im sure that anyone that has the knowledge, or is learning the knowledge, of creating 'custom header-based filters' is also very well adapted to learning the extra part of the procedure (namely "after creating your custom header and the filter, rebuild the desired folder you choose to run the filter on").