"Entire Message" option is gray in Mail

I suddenly am unable to retrieve search results from "Entire Message". Searching "From", "To" and "Subject" are all fine. There is scattered feedback regarding a Spotlight reset, but most revolves around allegedly dangerous moves in Terminal. Thoughts?

this is usually caused by spotlight problems as you've found out. make sure that your mail folder is not excluded from spotlight searches. check spotlight privacy pane in system preferences->spotlight. if Mail folder is not excluded then I suggest you reindex the whole drive. add the drive to spotlight's privacy pane for about 5 seconds and then remove it from there. spotlight will reindex the drive (might take a while). try searching in Mail after that.

Similar Messages

  • Mail no longer does Entire Message search

    I am no longer able to get Mail to do an "Entire Message" search. When I type a word in the Search box, the 'Entire Message' button appears "grayed out", and the only options available with All Mailboxes are From, To, and Subject. I did a Rebuild, I checked the settings in Preferences for searching Trash, Junk, Encrypted Messages (not that those should matter), I'm using a POP server, etc This seems to have just started since the 10.5.7 update. (help! thanks <Edited by Host>)

    bbbbobbb,
    Quit Mail, open System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy, and add your Macintosh HD to the list. Wait a couple of minutes, and then remove your Macintosh HD from the Privacy list. You should notice (after a short delay) that Spotlight is reindexing your HD. After Spotlight completes the index, open Mail and see if your search works.
    ;~)

  • Mail won't search entire message

    my mail program will only search using title, sender or receiver, not the entire message. any idea why?
    thanks...

    So today, for no particular reason, I attempted to perform a search using the Entire Message option, which—for as long as I can remember—produced no results. Now, it simply works.
    While I haven't tested it is some time, and have applied both the Mac OS X 10.4.5 Update weeks ago and a Security Update early last week, I have made no other changes to my configuration. Suddenly, it works: and, for no apparent reason. Wish I could tell you just what I might have done to 'fix' this…

  • Search 'Entire Message' in Mail on network account.

    Hello -
    Recently an issue has come up where my users are unable to choose the "Entire Message" option when performing a search in Mail.  "From", "To" and "Subject" all work fine.
    All of my users are running latest updates of 10.6 and 10.7 and all are on network accounts.  This is not a new problem, but it's a new question that came up a few months ago and I've been scraping for an answer since then.
    -I understand that for the "From, To and Subject" search options, Mail handles them separately in the Envelope Index file.
    -Spotlight is responsible for the Entire Message option.
    -I had to force spot light to index the user folder through terminal using mdutil and specifying "~/".  The user folders are not on local storage so Spotlight ignores them.
    After forcing mdutil to index - a spotlight search will return results as I would expect - searching entire message but, Mail still does not allow for the Entire Message search option.
    Please let me know if more information would help.  Thank you in advance.

    Maybe I just needed to talk it out, but I think I've sorted it out on my own.
    I went to the Account Prefs > Offending Mailbox and under the heading:
    "Keep copies of messages offline for viewing" from "Dont Keep Any..." to "All..."
    Then I went to Mailbox>Rebuild in the menubar and Bang!
    Results!
    Now I'm just waiting for the rebuild to finish to see what kind of hit my HD is going to take.

  • Mail on disk image, Spotlight can find messages, but "entire message" can't

    For security purposes I've moved my to a disk image. For details on how to do this, see:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5837719
    It's a relatively easy thing to do as long as you make sure that a symbolic link exists to your new Mail disk image's volume from ~/Library/Mail.
    Getting to the point: Spotlight is able to find my mail messages when the disk image is mounted. So far -- no problem.
    The catch is this: Mail->Search->"Entire Message" is completely broken. I get zero results, no matter what the query is. Finder Spotlight searches are able to find results for the same queries. We're talking about local mbox folders, not online IMAP folders. Searches within Mail in To/From work fine.
    I've tried the following suggestions, scoured from various help forums:
    -- repairing disk permissions
    -- rebuilding the Spotlight index
    -- deleting Envelope Index and re-importing my messages
    -- vacuuming the SQLite databases
    None of these suggestions helped.
    I've caught wind of this on other forums, but so far there doesn't seem to be a definitive fix, unless I've missed something. I'm not sure if the fact that I'm running Mail from a disk image is particularly germaine to the issue, either.
    Any ideas on how to get Search working for entire messages again?
    This is on 10.5.1, clean install. (This is a new MacBook.)

    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.

  • Strange 'Entire Message' search problems on cloned external drive only

    Hello,
    I'm having some strange problems with the 'Entire Message' spotlight style search function in Mail.
    There are various threads on the forums about a similar problem, as can be found here:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9450686#9450686
    http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7286254
    http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7540966
    However, here's the twist – it works perfectly fine on my computer, a late 2006 MBP with Tiger, but the 'Entire Message' search ONLY doesn't work when booting from the external hard drive, which is an EXACT clone using smart copy with super duper. Everything else works fine!
    To give an example, when I type in a client's second name in Mail on my computer's HD, with 'Entire Message' enabled 400+ emails appear, when I type it in when booting from the external HD clone there was around 10 emails on the first attempt (whilst Mail was open at the same time) and there were 0 on my second clone attempt, whilst Mail and all other applications were closed. Enabling 'From' and 'To' works fine, just not the 'Entire Message' search.
    I really need this critical function to work, as I'm about to loose my old computer and use it on a daily bases.
    So any ideas anyone?
    TIA
    Message was edited by: Scottishengineer

    ...
    There's an interesting thread there:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1366101
    down at the bottom there's this post by the bryceman, that sums it all up for people that don't want to fiddle around with the Terminal:
    +"Thanks Julien, that Launch Services put me in the right direction too and now my Leopard Mail Entire Message Search is 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."
    If I was to do this myself, using Onyx that I've downloaded, and as described above, should I do it from the internal on to the clone? The trouble is I have 1 and a half days left with this computer and I need to use the 'Entire Message' search with mail practically that whole time as I'm totaling a large invoice for a client whilst looking at hundreds emails related to them, this is a nightmare.
    Can you recommend me a cloud service that will let me download on to my emergency computer that's an old G4 Powermac with Panther? A tried ADrive and kept on getting the 302 error cod, and tried DriveHQ but it tells me to 'insert the volume related to the file' ............ these seem to work fine when downloading to my intel MBP though ....
    Message was edited by: Scottishengineer

  • Mail will no longer search "Entire Message". That option is grayed out. Why?

    How do I get Mail to search "Entire Message". That option suddenly is grayed out.

    A SMTP is a server for sending messages, and not as an Incoming server.  Do you mean an IMAP server?
    I did not mean it was for a single message, but the fact that you had a single message in local storage turned the option on, but it could only have search the messages that were in local storage.
    Check again in Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced what is selected regarding Keep copies of Messages?
    Ernie

  • "search entire message" button in mail is sometimes grayed out

    Hi, Recently I've noticed that sometimes when I do a search in mail the button to search entire message is grayed out and unclickable.  This started happening in the last few days.  Just a minute ago I tried to do a search and the button was gray, then I went to Safari and logged into Apple support, went back to mail and typed a new search, and all of sudden the button is clickable again.  Any ideas?  Running 10.6.7 on a 15" Macbook Pro.  Thanks...

    Ernie,
    I collected the info you require - see below. Along the way I deduced that the problem may be a corrupted Spotlight index. As you'll see below attempting to remove Library or Mail from the index failed. I am currently rebuilding the entire volume index...
    Repair permissions - log shows no fixes. Search still fails...
    POP-<email> varies from 14.7MB down to 120kb.
    Typically the root level of POP-<email> is
    Deleted Messages.mbox
    Sent Messages.mbox
    Drafts.mbox
    INBOX.mbox
    Junk.mbox
    Some account also have "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2"
    The root level of INBOX.mbox is typically:
    Info.plist [not always]
    Messages
    POP-steve%[email protected]
    has top level
    Deleted Messages.mbox
    Drafts.mbox
    INBOX.mbox
    Junk.mbox
    MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded
    MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2
    Sent Messages.mbox
    with INBOX.mbox top level of
    content_index
    Info.plist
    mbox
    mbox.SKindex
    mbox.SKindex.isValid
    Messages
    tableofcontents
    I deleted the out of date indexes, etc.
    Spotlight prefs, Privacy, add ~/Library/Mail
    "Privacy List Error
    The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."
    Same Mail operation worked on MBP -- also on MBP Library folder.
    Try MacPro Library - same error.
    Delete entire MacPro index. More to follow on whether this is the fix...

  • Search entire message not working in Mail, but Spotlight works.

    I am having a problem where my mail App is not searching the entire body of the message any more. I installed Lion soon after it was released, and I believe that it has been working up until recently.
    If I do a search, it won't search the message body, and gives me no option to search for "Message contains" (just "People" and "Subjects"). If search for subject "foo" and then click on the "Subject" pull down menu, it shows "Subject" and "Entire Message", but "Entire Message" is greyed out.
    I've done a lot of web searching and most people with similar problems had problems with Spotlight.
    If I do a Spotlight search, it does find all of the mail messages correctly. Its just the Mail app that won't let me search.
    I haven't tried re-indexing spotlight yet because spotlight seems to be working okay.
    Note that all of my mail accounts are "POP" accounts with the mail stored locally on my machine.
    Has anyone else encountered this?
    Thanks,
    Ron

    I should have tried this before posting, but a reboot fixed my problem.

  • Option to search "entire message" is greyed out

    When performing a search in mail, the option to search the entire message is greyed out. Searching from, to and subject all work fine.
    Any ideas?

    You can try using Rebuild on the Inbox, but I think I would remove the account, then add it back, and wait until Mail rebuilds its cache of messages kept for Offline viewing. Then test again.
    Ernie

  • How can I delete part of my message or forward part of it? I only see an option that allows me to delete the entire message.... Help please

    How can I delete part of my message or forward part of it? I only see an option that allows me to delete the entire message.... Help please

    hold your finger on the part of the message you want to delete. This will give you the copy and more option. Choose more, and then you will be able to choose the message or messages you want to delete. Once selected you will be able to tap the trash can icon on the bottom of your screen.

  • Forwarding a selection of a message in Mail, without if sending the entire message

    Hello
    I have recently incurred a few problems with Mail, forwarding and replying to messages.
    I have selected a section of a message I wanted to forward to a friend, selected the pictures, clicked on forward and added a message and email address. I have later checked my sent box and Mail has forwarded the new message with pictures at the top of the email and the entire original email below, containing personal information, personal conversations and contact info!
    Why? It did not show all this in the new window when I selected the pictures.
    I have not changed any of the setting on my iMac as I have not had any problems prior.
    Can someone let me know if there is a bug in Mail or have I simply done something wrong, as I do not wasn’t to repeat it again.
    Peter

    From the sounds of it I don't think this is a problem - I think it's just your perception
    By default, Mail.app shows messages in a threaded view - that is, when you reply to a message (or get a reply to a message), Mail.app shows the message thread so that you can review the entire message stream without having to hunt down other messages in your InBox or Sent Items.
    The clue is the disclosure triangle in the message list, and dividing line and message headers (From, To, Subject lines) between each message in the message pane.
    The upshot is that this is local to your machine only - YOU can see the message thread, but people you forward the snippet to cannot.
    You can test this easily enough by forwarding your snippet to an account outside of Mail.app - set yourself up a free gmail.com account as a test, for example, and see what that account gets.

  • Mail search won't search Entire Message

    When I type anything into the search bar in mail, and have it select to search Entire Message, it won't find anything. Even if I only type 2 characters, it won't find it.
    In the SpotLight System Preference, I tried adding the whole drive to the privacy pane and then removing it.

    I had this problem too - I can't believe that now at 10.5.8, Apple STILL haven't sorted this out.
    I have eventually managed to get search back again (don't want to speak too soon though). Among other things, I did mdimport ~/Library/Mail following the advice in http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5934412#5934412. However, I don't know if this actually had any particular effect, as Spotlight seemed to start a new index run after I had done this (which presumably would override the effects of the specific import).
    I have tried most things mentioned - rebuild mailbox, delete Envelope Index after quitting Mail, all sorts of variants of turning Spotlight or different volumes to be indexed or not on or off.
    I have not tried (because I don't think they are likely to have any effect) deleting the preferences, switching off and on again, resetting PRAM etc.
    I have tried searching for duplicate Mail copies, and searching for .metadataneverindex and disk utility checking permissions on the volumes and manually on the mail folders, and checking by looking that the mail folders are not packages, but come on, I don't think any of these are likely.
    Personally, I think it was the virgin sacrifice that fixed it.

  • Why is it when I forward mails from my MAc, PC users don't receive the entire message.

    Help!! Why is it when I send and emial out from my Mac, the other party can't receive the entire message?

    You have two different issues: HP and Canon.
    I don't know if I believe the Canon people. Windows XP has lots of different print options. Try installing Bonjour on Windows and then setting up a networked, Color Apple Laserwriter PS printer using "http://macmini.local:631" (assuming macmini is the name of your Mac). I have done this before (though not on a Canon). I am sure Canon will only support a standard configuration and this is not quite standard. Give it a try. It doesn't sound like it can hurt anything in your current setup.
    For the HP, you might have to just wait for an updated driver from HP. HP has always had this problem. They are a huge printer company and I'm sure they get Apple hardware and OS versions before anybody else in the world. And yet, it seems as if they don't even begin working on their drivers until Apple officially releases a new OS. HP drivers are always the last to show up for a new OS and the first to break. If you get it working under MacOS 10.4.6, and then upgrade to 10.4.7, it is very likely that the HP drivers will stop working.
    Unlike some of the other big companies, HP seems to have made the transition from Classic MacOS to MacOS X seamlessly. Their printer driver software works just as well on MacOS X as it did under MacOS.

  • Mail now missing 'load more messages' option?

    I'm running iOS 4.02. Mail is set up to use Gmail via exchange synching.
    Today I opened Mail and wanted to go back a few days in my Gmail account so I scrolled to the bottom where I thought there used to be the 'load more/older messages' option. Alas, it's no longer there.
    Did I imagine that feature? Did google update something on their end getting rid of it?

    If you are accessing your Gmail account as an Exchange account, there is an option with an Exchange account for the number of days to sync.
    On your iPhone, go to Setting > Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
    Select your Gmail account.
    At Mail Days to Sync, what is selected?

Maybe you are looking for