Thunderbird Email Indexing Is Very Slow

Thunderbird indexing can hurt performance.

Thunderbird is an open-source email client developed by Mozilla Messaging, a subsidiary of Mozilla. Since its initial release in late 2004, Thunderbird has evolved to become a very capable email client. Version 3.0 includes the ability to index all saved email messages and attachments. Indexing helps to improve performance when searching archived emails and files. In practice, however, building and maintaining the index may adversely affect performance because it takes substantial amounts of time and disk space. It is very easy to disable indexing in Thunderbird 3.

Instructions

1. Open Thunderbird.

2. Click the "Tools" menu and select "Options."

3. Click the "Advanced" tab and make sure the "General" tab is selected under "Advanced."

4. Uncheck "Enable Global Search and Indexes."

5. Restart Thunderbird.

References

• Mozilla Messaging: Thunderbird 3.1 Features
• MozillaZine: Thunderbird 3.0 Installation Issues