Apple Mail search feature?

Is there a concise list anyplace that explains how to do boolean searches in Apple Mail, and all the various options?
Have found information scattered here & there, and help file offers general instructions but no information on how to actually make them work. Essentially says "you can do boolean searches".
Couple examples:
"If you began your search in the Spotlight menu in the upper-right corner of your screen, click Show All to switch to a search window."
Where is "Show All"?
Perform a Boolean query
A Boolean query uses AND, OR, and NOT (known as Boolean operators) to narrow the search results. You can also use a minus sign (-), meaning AND NOT, to exclude items when you search. Here are examples of what you might type in the search field when you use Boolean operators:
author:tom OR author:thom searches for items authored by Tom or Thom, if you don’t know the exact spelling of his name.
trip -france searches for items that contain the word “trip” but not “france,” so results might include photos from a trip to Spain but not to France.
Looking to search a message from person A, with the body or subject of the message containing text X. How do you type the second operator (above syntax doesn't seeem to work)? How does one even know what all the operators are without a list in a dialogue box like other email programs have?
Image below is an example of a search. Can't get a second operator to work:
http://tinyurl.com/77unn2w

That the text changes at all is the problem. I simply want to type a word, and search for it. The drop downs limits the choices, apparently, to what Mail thinks you want. If it's not there, you simply can't search.
Example below. I want to search for a message from "Roy". I type "Roy". Mail doesn't have an option to search the "from" field. Have seen that option other times, doesn't appear here for some reason.
Second issue: you can't get any options at all for a second search term without choosing one of the "pre-filled" choices that appear. There were some pre-filled choices further down, none of which applied. Clicking "Message contains "project" leaves you with no choices (to search the subject field, for example).

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Mail search feature not working

Not a good day today but to top it off, my Mail search feature doesn't seem to be working. In the past I've praised OSX Mail search features and enjoyed the instant results all whilst bashing the inop feature Outlook and Notes try to utilize. I'm afraid to say the OSX Lion Mail search feature is completely non-functional. As I was searching for this issue through the support topics, I noticed this very topic appear then quickly disappear. I couldn't duplicate the search again for anything. Hmm.
Also, what's the dealy with opening a PDF in Mail with Preview and your last 5 PDF's open as well? Uncool. And I want Safari to open with my Home page, not the last page I visited.
At least the Spotlight will still identify the messages I'm wrangling for.
No need to reply... just need to vent a bit.

LaraCroft_NYC wrote:
A lot of things are broken in LION. Not recommended for professionals (only iPad users).
But here's a way to make better use of Mail Search:
In the new Mac LION MAIL app, it's not apparent that you can search for any part of any email address the way you could before with any previous OS, for when you type partial email text in the MAIL search field, it simply gives you a drop-down list of wrong or limited suggestions and none of the suggestions are email addresses, but people's names. I don't want to search by name, I want to search by email address. (Maybe I'm the only one who does this.) If two different email addresses have the same associated name (which I have), it chooses the wrong one and searches for the wrong email address!
But there is a way:
1) Select the mailbox you want to search (if any).
2) Type in the search field:
          to: any_string ["return" or "enter"]
          OR
          from: any_string ["return" or "enter"]
3) Your entry will change from this:
to this:
4) Notice that after you press "return" or "enter", your "to:" (or "from:") becomes a pull-down-menu button and the MAIL's silly choices go away. If you click the button, you get this:
and you can change your choice.
3) Strangely, "to:" or "from:" MUST be ALL lowercase for this change to take place. (It will still work if "To:" and "FroM:" are all or part uppercase, but the change to a menu button will not occur.)
4) On the menu bar below the toolbar, you will see the places to search ("All…Selected mailbox…Inbox…Drafts…Sent…Flagged")
Hello Lara_Croft.
Again, this time with your original fix. This works for me.. big help until Apple gets this squared away.
Alan Roseman

Apple Mail search misses many items

Regarding searching within Apple Mail
I will search on emails from, say, "Fred Smith" and get a bunch of results that won't include an email that I know that I just got from Fred Smith. Nowhere to be seen. Then I'll scroll down through my messages and find the message... exactly from Fred Smith. But not showing up in Apple Mail search.
Or, and I see this one a lot lately: I'll search "Entire Message" for "Fred Smith" and get a bunch of results that don't include the email that I know is there. Then I'll switch to "From" suddenly the missing message appears.
For me, for years now, Apple Mail is HORRIBLY unreliable in its searching. I still use it, because I like other parts of it, but I don't ever expect the search to actually turn up items that are there...
Anyone know why / what's going on, or how I might fix this, or whether there's a new version of Mail coming with 10.5 that might fix this?

That a message was sent by Fred Smith doesn’t necessarily mean that “Fred Smith” appears anywhere in the message, not even if Mail shows his name in the From column or message header when displaying that message. If you do View > Message > Raw Source on one of the messages that aren’t included in the search results, do you actually see “Fred Smith” anywhere?
and I see this one a lot lately: I'll search "Entire Message" for "Fred Smith"
and get a bunch of results that don't include the email that I know is there.
Then I'll switch to "From" suddenly the missing message appears.
Mail uses Spotlight for Entire Message searches only, and its own index for the rest. What you’re describing here would indicate there is something wrong with Spotlight’s indexing of your mail rather than with Mail itself...
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, type the following command and press <Return> (you can copy the command here and paste it in Terminal):
sudo mdutil -E -i on /
The -E option tells Spotlight to delete any already existing index data (so that it’s rebuilt from scratch all over again). The -i on option ensures that indexing is enabled. Finally, the ‘/’ at the end means “apply this command to the startup disk”.
After entering the previous command in Terminal, you’ll be prompted for your administrator password. Type it blindly (you won’t see any feedback of the keystrokes while you type it) and press <Return>.
Alternatively, you may prefer to reindex the startup disk using the following procedure, but I’ve seen cases where using Teminal worked whereas doing what the article suggests didn’t:
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
While you’re on it, make sure Mail Messages is checked in the Search Results pane of System Preferences > Spotlight and that no folders containing mail data appear in the Privacy pane.
For best results, quit Mail and don’t play too much with your disk while Spotlight reindexes it, i.e. avoid files being created/modified/deleted, mail being downloaded, etc.

Apple Mail Search and Spotlight do not work for locating email messages after upgrading to Lion 10.8.3.

Apple Mail Search and Spotlight do not work for locating email messages after upgrading to Lion 10.8.3 on my 27" iMac.
When searching in Apple Mail, sometimes a get a few results (with many missing), and sometimes no results at all.
I had absolutely no problems before with Snow Loepard.
I have reindexed mail and my startup drive. I have followed discussions regarding this matter and tried everything - a waste of time.
This is VERY serious for me - I have many thousands of messages that I archive and need to reference for work and clients, and now I cannot find them.

I found out that I needed a $100 mini displayport to dual-link dvi adapter to make my $30" cinema display work with my macbook pro
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A/mini-displayport-to-dual-link-dvi-ada pter?fnode=51
When I found out that solved the problem, I took it back because that was too expensive for a stupid adapter, and it still didn't work perfectly.

My Mail search feature

My Mail search feature seems to have stopped finding anything. Why? I use this frequently to find old mail in my inbox or sent folder. It stopped finding anything about two weeks ago.

My Mail search feature seems to have stopped finding anything. Why? I use this frequently to find old mail in my inbox or sent folder. It stopped finding anything about two weeks ago.

After installing the Maverick upgrade my Apple Mail search and flags no longer work correctly?

after installing the Maverick upgrade my Apple Mail search and flags no longer work correctly? I've already rebuilt the mailboxes with no change in the problem. What else can I do???

Hi as2020,
If you are having issues with Mail in Mavericks, you may want to make sure you have updated to the most recent release. You may find the following article helpful:
OS X: About Mail Update for Mavericks
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6030
Regards,
- Brenden

10.6.7 apple mail - search 'entire message' is greyed out

10.6.7 apple mail - search 'entire message' is greyed out
can't use it - other choices ok
was working yesterday...
hw do I get it back?

See the discussions at:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15146088#15146088
Can be temporary with POP perhaps, but should work. With IMAP, it is required that copies of messages be kept for local searching.
More info, please.
Ernie

Apple Mail search not working for Inbox

In the last few weeks I've notice the Apple Mail (5.2) search feature has stopped working correctly. It used to turn up all relevant results in a mail box, then lately it seems (based on the results) to go back just a few weeks and not the full year of mail that is in the mailbox.
Following the advise of a MacWorld article I removed these files from Mail's library folder… Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal, restarted Mail and followed the prompt to reindex. Following that… Search works worse, I run tests to find a word in the body and get 0 results… and I know it's there. As I type in the last letter of the word into the Seach lozenge I get a list just below the lozenge ) of People and Subjects that contain the word but nada results for the word in the Body of the message. These tests were run on the Inbox, other mailboxes (with List-serve Mail) seem to work ok… but the Inbox Search is what I really care about.
Any ideas about fixing this? Thanks in advance,
Paul

This is very dissapointing.
How can I delete my Mail App and re-install it????????
My mail App on my MacBook Pro 10.8 is working now
But I can not get my Mail App to search anything to display 2013

Apple Mail Search is acting strange

Hello.
I have been having some major issue with Apple Mail (6.5) in its search function.
I have been a heavy user of Apple Mail (over 15,000 emails on the program- and archived every year) for many years, and never had this issue.
When I search for a key word it does not find it! I noticed that this not to work on emails in my In Box or Sent Boxes (Gmail email POP). If I move a specific email to a newly created folder On My Mac and then search, the keyword will be found in the email in that new folder- but never on the orignal Inbox or Sent Box! Also, the search works fine for senders of emails (by name) if I search for them.
The issue is mainly in finding a key word in the content of an email and particurly in the In and Sent boxes!
I tried EVERYTHING I could find online from reindenxing the whole Macintosh HD, deleting Envelope Files... I even deleted Apple Mail and then reinstalled it from Mountain Lion DVD! STILL same issue.
To test things, I exported Mailboxes to another Macbook Air I have (brand new) and then imported these mailboxes into the correct location (Inbox, Sent...etc), and the search there worked fine!
ANY IDEAS, as this is frustrating and I am seriously considering switching to new email client after all these years.
Thanks,

The mail search uses Spotlight to find results, so your problem may be more of a corrupted Spotlight index. To recreate your Spotlight index, go to System Preferences->Spotlight, click the Privacy tab at the top, and add your Boot drive here (usually Macintosh HD). Close and re-open this preference page and then remove the Macintosh HD from the privacy tab.
Within about 30 seconds, you should notice the Spotlight magnifying glass icon in the top menu bar will say it is indexing, and it may take about 15+ minutes to complete. Hopefully that will return your missing search results in the Mail.app.

My Mail search feature in Snow Leopard just stopped working

My search feature for Mail in snow leopard just stopped working. I had a system crash while trying to reformat a corrupted flash drive. Now when I search in mail it just spins the color wheel. Any suggestions?

Hello FredBus,
Welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience! To help you get the most out of the HP Forums I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
I understand your TouchScreen stopped working and you are inquiring as to whether you can toggle it off and on.I would be happy to assist you, but first I would encourage you to post which operating system you are using. And whether your operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit as with this we can provide you with accurate information.
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Is the Windows Version on My Computer 32-bit or 64-bit?
Please re-post with the requested information and I would be happy to provide you with assistance. Thank you for posting on the HP Forums. Have a great day!
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Yosemite Apple Mail search not working

Upgraded Mac mini from Mavericks to Yosemite.
Search within Apple mail is not working.
Come to think of it, search everywhere seems to be broken. It's as if Spotlight is not working too well.

FINALLY I found a way to fix this issue, at least for me:
Boot into SAFE mode: OS X Yosemite: Start up in safe mode
Run Applications -> Disk Utility
Click on your hard drive's volume
Click and run Repair Disk Permissions
Reboot
Voila! Fixed at last!
I also found that Alfred was hanging on startup, probably same reason as Alfred uses Spotlight in the background.
No more issues.
What's weird is that I finally bit the bullet and installed Yosemite on my 13" Retina MacBook Pro and had no spotlight issues whatsoever. Weird.

Apple mail search finds the message but cannot show its content, why?

Hi
I have a MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion installed on it. All the updates are also installed.
The problem is that I can quickly find a message among 100,000 messages sorted in different folders in Apple Mail, but as I click on the message, it keeps showing "loading..." and never shows the content of that message.
When I manually go to that message, Mail shows the content properly. So it happens only when I try to see the content of the message that has been found through search function.
Any ideas?
thanks,
Farshid

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter "mdworker" (without the quotes) in the Filter text field. Select the most recent 50 or so messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
If there are long runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.
Step 2
Do the same with the search string "mds".

Apple mail search

Mac OS X Mountain Lion
Apple Mail
Apple Mail finds nothing when I search a text in the body (Entire message) of the messages. If I search a text in the "subject" or "from" or "to" of the messages, it's OK.
I have about 40000 messages in my InBox.

The solution I found was to reinstall Mountain Lion over the existing installation. Entire message search now works as expected

Apple mail search is flaky

all of a sudden when i search a name or key word in mail, it often does not find it. is there any way to reset without deleting the application and losing all mail in inbox, sent, etc.?

The mail search uses Spotlight to find results, so your problem may be more of a corrupted Spotlight index. To recreate your Spotlight index, go to System Preferences->Spotlight, click the Privacy tab at the top, and add your Boot drive here (usually Macintosh HD). Close and re-open this preference page and then remove the Macintosh HD from the privacy tab.
Within about 30 seconds, you should notice the Spotlight magnifying glass icon in the top menu bar will say it is indexing, and it may take about 15+ minutes to complete. Hopefully that will return your missing search results in the Mail.app.

OS X Lion Mail - search feature

Searching through the thousands of emails on my laptop used to be easy with Snow Leopard. Within seconds I would search through entire messages, or who I sent to, or received from, or by subject. That simplicity seems to have been bleached out of Lion. Is anybody else having trouble with email search on Lion or is it just me?

I found another issue with the search function. I've noticed the search results do not include email messages placed in an archive folder I've created on my mac. Only messages which are located in the actual inboxes and sent items are included in the search items.
I can also confirm that the "from" list is incomplete. I've the idea that only contacts which are listed in the MS Exchange directory (of my university) are listed, in addition to my own contacts. Senders which I haven't saved in my contact list are missing.
Interesting to not is that spotlight is able to find the messages which are not listed via the Mail search.
Another thing: "entire message" does not include sender information: for instance, mails from dropbox only show up if I select "From", but not when I select "entire message". This is counter intuitive in my opinion. BTW, I just see that the term "dropbox" is almost always included in the main text, so it should show up, even if "entire message" does not search through the "From" section.
I find the new search function quite horrible to use. I hope someone is able to point out what I'm doing wrongly.
UPDATE:
I just created a new mailbox and moved a couple of "old" (pre-lion-received) messages which I was not able to find previously into the new mailbox and guess what happened: I now am able to find via the search funciton
UPDATE 2:
I think something went wrong when I upgraded to Lion. I've rebuilded all my old mailboxes and it now works fine. You can do the same by selecting your mailbox and click Mailbox -> Rebuild.
Message was edited by: Morrey

Apple Mail search feature?

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