Configuring Thunderbird’s Addressbook Search

Thunderbird is a highly configurable email client. Configurable software is very effective with people who want to customize the software for their specific demands. I had one such experience recently.

A friend wanted to search more fields using the Thunderbird’s addressbook search. By default, it looks only at the email address and the names of a contact. Whereas he wanted it to search in the Organization and screen name fields. Since he did not find a GUI preference that let him do this, he asked me if Thunderbird was configurable enough to get this done. So here we go.

Go to Edit-Preferences-Advanced-General Tab-Config Editor to open it. The path might be Tools-Options-Advanced… if you are on Windows. Once it opens, type quicksearch in the filter text box, which will return the preference mail.addr_book.quicksearchquery.format. If you look at the value, it uses a specific syntax to look at the PrimaryEmail, DisplayName, FirstName, LastName fields. To include Organization in the search fields, insert (Company,c,@V) immediately after (LastName,c,@V). The value is now:

?(or(PrimaryEmail,c,@V)...(LastName,c,@V)(Company,c,@V))

That’s it, now when you use the search in the address book, it will look for your string in the Organization field as well. How did I know the field corresponding to Organization was called Company? Type attr in the filter text box, and you will find the various attributes. Similarly add one for _AimScreenName and the search will now look through it as well.