I use Betterbird as my main email client so I tried out the attachment searching. Searching by attachment name seemed to work well, but it doesn't look like it searches for the text within the documents, at least not for PDFs. Not sure if there's like an OCR extension or anything that would do it, but yeah just the base Betterbird install doesn't do it as far as I can see.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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I have had the exact same issue as you. Thunderbird is great, but their attachment search is not. I spent a lot of time looking for a way to make it work and what I settled on is using a third party program to serve this function: Recoll (https://www.recoll.org/index.html).
It should be available in your distro's package repository.
You'll need to download your messages to your computer, but it will work in the way that you expect search to work (I.e. search by filename, search by text within attachments, search by text within emails). Setup is straightforward. You just need to point it to the Thunderbird profile directory where your emails are saved. As a bonus, you get good desktop search for all the other files on your computer too.
Sadly (don't throw anything at me), the only desktop email program that I have found that does search properly is Outlook desktop. On Linux, that is obviously a non-starter.
Honestly I might try this. Or maybe I can use grep lol. We'll see how it fits in my workflow, I'm comfortable in the CLI but haven't really entertained the idea a CLI email client before. Thanks
Recoll (thankfully) has a GUI. It isn't the prettiest app, but it was easy to set up and I've otherwise quite happy with it.
Geary or Mailspring are the best options. Neither is perfect. I lean toward Geary.
I like mainspring but I can’t get my corporate outlook account to work with it
sudo apt install claws-mail
Fast, reliable, insanely functional - weird formats. Yes it has a calendar, works great.
maybe evolution is what you’re searching for
Where indexing and searching mails is concerned, notmuch is the best I've seen. Do note that this is not an e-mail client, it only indexes, tags and searches (following the "UNIX philosophy" of doing one job well).
I personally use it with neomutt as a mail user agent, which is almost certainly not what you want. Notmuch supports other clients but they're all pretty arcane.
So this is not a recommendation, just a glimpse into advanced e-mail setups I guess.
this is one of the things that struck me about email clients on Linux – CLI and GUI clients have followed two very different evolutionary paths – the CLI clients went for the “doing one job well” path (where you end up assembling a whole system of apps for sending and receiving email) and the GUI clients went for the “everything and the kitchen sink” path (where you end up trying to hide half the options so they don’t get in your way)
I've always liked Thunderbird. Geary is also nice. Not sure if it can attachment search.
You can filter messages with attachment on Thunderbird btw
Yes but I can't search by the name of the attachment. Unfortunately that's a deal breaker for me. I need it to search the Content-Type field at the very least and I don't think it can do that without an extension
Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment.
I just searched for text thats in an attachment filename and it worked - with a caveat. I have a filename called "PMASUP236 - Operate Vehicles In The Field.pdf" on an email. There is no reference to the PMASUP236 in any other part of any email.
If I search "PMASUP236", it returns the email as a result.
If I search "SUP236" it does not.
If I search "Operate Vehicles" it returns that email (along with a heap of others containing the word "Operate" and "Vehicles" in any order).
Admittedly this is on Windows at work, though I do run Thunderbird on Linux at home. Will have to try it there to confirm.
Please do. I'm on Debian and it didn't work for me
If you're on Debian Stable you might have a version of Thunderbird that doesn't have this feature, since software there is a bit "outdated". Next stable (trixie) releases in few months though.
That might actually be the case. I am indeed on Debian stable. Thanks
Is this using Quick Filter or Classic search?
You can use the FiltaQuilla extension to add content-type as search category. It's a pretty powerful yet straight forward extension
I didn't know about this extension. I will try it. Thanks
I've been having a grand time with sylpheed.
Mostly because thunderbird changed its presentation layout and i took it personally. Plus sylpheed is lighter weight.
Last stable version is over 7 years old. Ouch...
This is why no-one in the right mind uses Sylpheed, but the actively maintained fork Claws Mail (which just recently had a new version released).
Never heard of it, will take a look thanks
Betterbird? Unsure if it can search Attachments am sure it shows attachments on top it's a fork of thunderbird