Advanced Search by Date

[lvarnava]

The task often arises of finding a letter sent (or recieved) during a specific period or at an exact date and time.

The current functionality can most likely be described as a search by age within one year. It's inconvenient and incomplete.

Thunderbird implements search by date and search by age in days.
There You can specify a specific date.
Options are shown in the GIF.
A combination of filters allows you to set a specific time period.

Does it make sense to improve the advanced search?

[kimusan]

Yes, and more of it works already than the dialog lets on.

The search box takes the same key=value syntax the advanced dialog builds, and it understands more keys than the dialog offers. These work today:

since=2026-01-01
before=2026-03-01
since=2026-01-01&before=2026-03-01
on=2026-02-14

The third is your date range. There is also senton=, sentsince= and sentbefore=, which match the Date header rather than the time the server took delivery, the same distinction Thunderbird draws between Date and Received.

So what is missing is the dialog, not the searching. buildSearchString() already emits real ISO dates for since and before; the dropdown simply never offers anything but the twelve relative presets. Adding two date fields is a small change, and the date picker and date format setting from the calendar work are already in the build, so they would follow your locale.

Time of day is the part I cannot promise. IMAP SEARCH date keys disregard time and timezone by specification, so the server can only answer in whole days. Thunderbird filters on time because it keeps a local index of your mail; doing that here means pulling candidates for the day and filtering afterwards, which breaks paging and the message count. Dates and ranges yes, an exact time no, not without something much larger behind it.

Your question also turned up two bugs on the way: reopening advanced search after a date search loses the date, and the date=from/to range form silently matches nothing. Both are now on the list.

Thanks for the detailed report, the Thunderbird GIF made the ask clear.

[lvarnava]

I remembered about typing search terms directly in the quick search bar. There were some unsuccessful attempts. Not everything is obvious. You need to read the wiki carefully. It's completely inaccessible for the average user :-). Perhaps a tooltip could be added, an info (i) button with an explanation or a link.

And one more thing. There's no validation of the entered values.
If I enter: on=2027, it shows me the current list. I'd like it to tell me to check the entered values.
If I enter: on=2023, it shows me the current list. I'd like it to say "error, invalid date format." Or convert the query to since=2023-01-01&before=2023-12-31.
If I enter on=2026-01-32, it says "no matches" instead of "check the entered data."
before=20280-10-15 - nothing, maybe it perceives it as search text.

[lvarnava]

However, there is no verification in either Gmail or Thunderbird.
If verification is unnecessary, I'd prefer the Thunderbird option, which shows an empty list and a "no matches" message if the input is incorrect.

[kimusan]

verification is quite complex but I will investigate what can be done. personally I think the optimal solution would be to just have them in the advanced search UI

[lvarnava]

I agree. Specifying a date before 1970 or after 2027 is not a critical issue. Another matter is if the date format is incorrect or there is an error in writing the key, then this can be avoided using the user graphical interface.

[lvarnava]

Could you add a toggle (checkbox) in Advanced Search to use SENTON/SENTSINCE/SENTBEFORE (the Date header) instead of ON/SINCE/BEFORE (INTERNALDATE)? This would be very helpful for imported or migrated mailboxes.

[lvarnava]

Tachyon 4.6.0.
Thank you @kimusan.
Everything is great!

[lvarnava]

However, there are a few minor UI issues with the date pickers:
• When clicking inside the From and then the To input fields, the first calendar closes and the second one opens properly, and clicking outside closes the calendar.
• However, if you click directly on the calendar icons themselves, both calendars can open at the same time and overlap each other.
• When opened via the icons, clicking outside does not close them. The only way to close them is to click inside the From or To input field again, and then click outside.
• Furthermore, if you close the Advanced Search dialog without selecting dates while the calendars are stuck open, they will still remain open the next time you reopen the search dialog.

It would be great to add an "On exact date" option (on=2026-02-14) to avoid setting up two calendars just to find messages from a single day (also with checkbox "Use the date it was sent, not received").
There is no localization in the calendar.

I pointed out another problem here.