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

Similar Messages

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.

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 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.

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

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 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).

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.

Apple mail search doesn't show messages

I can normally search for sent and received emails by entering a persons email address in the search field with the spyglass icon, since last week I haven't been able to do this even though all messages show up in the inbox and sent folders. Is there a setting that I might have accidentally changed?

Step 1
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -F '$Time $Message' -k Sender mdworker -o -k Message Rne Norm -k Sender mds | tail | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear.
The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.
Step 2
Enter the following command as in Step 1 and post the output:
mdutil -as 2>&- | pbcopy
You can then quit Terminal.
Step 3
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Terminal. In the Console window, look under the heading DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION on the left for crash reports related to Spotlight. If you don't see that heading, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar. A Spotlight crash report has a name beginning in "mds" or "mdworker" and ending in ".crash". Select the most recent such report, if any, from the System and User subcategories and post the entire contents—the text, please, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)
Please don’t post any other kind of diagnostic report, such as hang logs—they're very long and not helpful.

Mail search not working after clean install of 10.5.4 on new 20" iMac

Apple Mail search is not working. Search on "subject line" works, but search on "entire message" does not. For example, searching with "parking" yields NO results, and there are many messages with the word "parking" in their body in the mailboxes. It happens with both "In Box" and "All Mailboxes" checked.
What's going on?
I did a clean install of Mac OS X on a 20" iMac using the Install disk shipped with the machine. Then I ran Software Update. Still, the problem happens, on a clean baseline system.
Argh.

I've had this problem since Tiger. Various solutions have been posted, but none have worked for me. It really cripples Mail--I've used emails as my personal database for years, kind of a history log, which worked great in Eudora but Eudora isn't being supported anymore.
After updating to X.5.5, I can search "entire message" for "All Mailboxes" and find everything including emails in the mailbox I was viewing (often finds 60,000 occurences, but doesn't take very long--it's just incredibly tedious to find the one I want from such an enormous set of results). I can also find everything using Spotlight, outside of Mail. But if I am looking at any mailbox, like Inbox, search "entire message" never finds anything at all. Searching for subjects etc works fine.

Does Mail search use Spotlight?

In Apple Mail, the search functions work poorly for me. I can find things by the category "From," for example, but searching for something in the "Entire message" doesn't find things that are there.
Does Mail use Spotlight for its searches? I have disabled it because it slowed down my old iMac too much.

Yes, Mulder is right, Mail Uses Spotlight for the Entire Message search (but not the To, From or Subject).
I am also running on a flat panel G5 iMac and found that with a clean Spotlight Database, Spotlight really speeds up and makes searching in Mail invaluable.
See my post below....
===
Leopard Mail Entire Message Search - FIXED!!!
My Original Post is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7462907#7462907
Posted by: DaveC
This is a known issue. Check out:
http://www.betalogue.com/2008/02/25/mac-os-x-105-tip-repairing-broken-spotlight- searches-in-mail/
http://www.betalogue.com/2008/03/28/mac-os-x-105-broken-spotlight-indexing-for-m ail-messages-caused-by-presence-of-older-mail-application/
Thanks Dave. I went to Betalogue and went through all the posts and I finally found a way to fix the Search Entire Message Spotlight problem in Apple Mail - at least it worked for me. I have been trying to fix this with all sorts of solutions for months and it turns out it was related to a problem with the Launch Services Database. I confirmed this by looking inside my user/library/mail folder and seeing that inside each Mailbox folder, the sub mailboxes all had standard folder icons and not the inbox tray style icons.
Note that you can easily fix this through Terminal Commands, and not all the following steps are completely necessary, but there are many people looking at these threads that want to just push buttons...
*== So here are my simple steps to fixing Apple Mail Search ==*
1. Attach and turn on any external hard drives you have that may have a copy of Mail.app on them
2. Delete all OLD copies of Mail.app that you can find (don't worry about Time Machine), but make sure you keep the latest version of Mail.app in your working Applications folder.
~ This is so that the LaunchServices database won't easily become corrupt again
3. Install the latest version of Onyx - free to use and download from www.macupdate.com
~ I suggest Onyx, because some people don't want to mess with the Terminal.
4. Quit all open applications and run Onyx (it will want to check your Hard Drive etc...that's OK).
5. Go to the Maintenance pane and then the Rebuild tab and select only the LaunchServices box. Click Execute.
~ This should fix the primary problem with searches
6. When that process finishes, select only the Mail's Envelope Index box. Click Execute.
~ This should fix related problems with other searches
7. When that process finishes, select only the Spotlight Index box. Click Execute. (This process of Rebuilding your Spotlight Index could take hours depending on how big your hard drive is).
~ This will give you a clean fast Spotlight database that Mail uses for Entire Message searches.
8. Quit Onyx
9. Open Mail.app and test your Entire Message Search!
====
Hope that helps - it certainly, finally, did for me!
Bryce.

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?

Ooops. I get it. I got to "Mail, Contacts and Calendar" by searching and never saw that it lived under iPhone...

Apple mail search

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