Mail search almost never working

I upgraded to Mavericks a couple of days ago. Since then, mail search works only rarely. No matter how I search in mail, I usually get tons of results with no clue as to why those results were chosen. I saw, in another discussion, the idea of trying spotlight search, so I did that. Unfortunately, I sometimes have to search for common words (today, I needed to know something about our house closing that I knew was in a mail message). Searching for a common word in spotlight is not workable. Does anyone know how I can get mail search to work again?

Okay, I did that. My hard drive actually went into then out of the privacy area extremely quickly. There's no indication that it's reindexing, but I assume it is . . . ?

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Mail search isn't working. Help!

Mail search isn't working (I'm running 10.5.8). It will search Subject/From/To, but searching 'Entire message' brings no results. This is a disaster. Tried reindexing Spotlight, but that didn't work. Any ideas gratefully received!

It does sound like a Spotlight indexing problem, has it had time to finish indexing?
In the meantime, it won't be as fast searching for content, but I'd get EasyFind...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076
Here's a direct download link to EasyFind 4.0 which runs in 10.3.9 & up...
http://www.devon-technologies.com/files/legacy/macosx1039/EasyFind.dmg.zip
From this page,
http://www.devon-technologies.com/support/faqs.php?p=default&cat=19
Freeware applications:
    * EasyFind 4.0
    * PhotoStickies 5.6
    * ThumbsUp 4.3
    * XMenu 1.8
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/8707
Use it to search your Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail for case insensitive whatever... once you open that folder in the Finder it should be a choice to limit the search to that folder at the dropdown at the right of EasyFind.

E-mail search doesn't work

Since the update of new Verizon e-mail software yesterday the search function does not work, and the screen allocations of space are unworkable. I didn't take time yesterday to set up the screens, and now it is not accessible. Software problems, or what?

I've been unable to search email "message" body ever since getting Verizon. I can search fine by sender, subject, etc, but when I try to search "message" I get a Verizon error message (not a browser error) stating: "We were unable to perform your request. Please try again." I've called tech support, and they tried to say this is some sort of broswer issue. It ISN'T, because again this is a verizon message coming up, and the other searches work fine. This has never worked in MONTHS, and I'm about ready to switch to another provider, since I need to be able to search my emails. UGGGH......

Multi-clip almost never works for me on the first attempt

Anybody know why when setting up a multi-clip, I can almost
never get it to work the first time I hit the timeline to start playing.
All my settings are correct, but either the viewer or timeline doesn't move on the first time try.
All I do is take my playhead back to the beginning of
timeline, hit play again, and usually it then starts working correctly. Sometimes I have better results if I hit the play in the Viewer instead of the Timeline, but it's not a consistent thing.
Again, I'm in open sync in Viewer and Canvas/Timeline, I'm in Unlimited RT, dynamic video quality and frame rate, multiclip activated there, turned off high quality scrubbing, ect.
I'm usually doing this with (3) short 3 minutes DV clips
on a mac book pro.
When I do get it going after the second, third or fourth attempt, I haven't changed any of the settings,...I've just confirmed that they were right to begin with.
Anybody else experience this and any ideas on how to get it to work correctly first time out?
Thanks.

so effectively it's on a different drive, sort of
But still using the same reader heads as your primary drive. So technically, it's still the same drive.
I just cut a 4 angle music video last week using my MacPro at work, and even with the source media on a FW800 G-Raid, I was still getting delayed playback and couldn't even view the 4-up display when playing back. So I moved the project to our XSAN, and with the fibre backbone there, bandwidth was definitely increased.
So the other variable in this problem is bandwidth as well as RAM. I know that a fibre based storage system isn't in everyone's budget, but I'd recommend trying out an eSATA based drive, given that I had trouble with 4 streams over FW800.

Mail search doesn't work

Hi
After upgrading to Yosemite, when I go into the search box in the upper right hand corner it doesn't select mail that meets the criteria. I can type anything in and it will find 5462 items and many of those don't contain the search word(s). What can I do to get Mail search working?
I run a Mac Book Pro about 3.5 years old.
David

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.
Back up all data before proceeding.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
          Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V, then press return.
A folder window will open. Inside it there should be files with names as follows:
          Envelope Index
          ExternalUpdates.storedata
Move those files to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have longer names that begin as above. Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK. Typically, the process takes a few minutes, but it may take hours if you have gigantic mailboxes. In that case, you may be able to speed things up by temporarily adding your home folder to the Privacy list in the Spotlight preference pane. Remove it when Mail has finished importing.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the files you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

Mail search doesn't work well after changing mail file to another drive

Hi, I need some help making the search in mail work for Mountain Lion. After I changed the mail folder to a new drive, SSD, creating an alias, everything works fine for mail except the search. When I search most of the times I get back emails that I received before doing the change.
I already tried at rebuilding the mailboxes, and also I erased the Envelop index files, and they rebuilt themselves, and still the search is not working properly for the emails I have received since I changed the mail files to the new drive.
Other than that the mail program is working well and as I work a lot with search I am experiencing a loss of productivity.
I wouldn't like to revert it to the old drive, as the new drive is SSD and goes much faster for the big size of my mail fines.
Thank you for your help !
Javier

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback
Or you can use your Apple ID to register with this site and go the Apple BugReporter. Supposedly you will get an answer if you submit feedback.
Feedback via Apple Developer

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

How do I search mail? It never works for me.

I want to search my email for a particular word or text string, but I can't get a single result. What am I doing wrong?

This is not a Firefox issue. Please contact your email provider for support.

MacBook Pro 10.4.9 Mail Search option not working!

When a key word or email address is entered into the search pain of mac mail, it produces 0 results every time, even when I have an email open containing the exact key word or email address.
Another thread suggested running a downloadable Etresoft report to help folks in the Apple Community answer questions. I am a new Mac user, so I really need baby steps to fix this issue. Being able to search my email is critical to my work performance and the small company I work for.
These are the results of the Etresoft Report:
EtreCheck version: 1.9.15 (52)
Report generated August 27, 2014 at 12:31:54 PM MDT
Hardware Information: ?
    MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) (Verified)
    MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro5,3
    1 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
    4 GB RAM
Video Information: ?
    NVIDIA GeForce 9400M - VRAM: 256 MB
        Color LCD 1024 x 768
    NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - VRAM: 256 MB
System Software: ?
    OS X 10.9.4 (13E28) - Uptime: 0 days 23:17:13
Disk Information: ?
    FUJITSU MJA2320BH FFS G1 disk0 : (320.07 GB)
    S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
        EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
        Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 319.21 GB (3.47 GB free) (Low!)
        Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
    MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-868
USB Information: ?
    HP Officejet 4500 G510g-m
    Apple Internal Memory Card Reader
    Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
    Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub
        Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
    Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
    Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Gatekeeper: ?
    Mac App Store and identified developers
Kernel Extensions: ?
    [not loaded]    com.novatelwireless.driver.3G (3.0.2) Support
    [not loaded]    com.novatelwireless.driver.3GData (3.0.2) Support
    [not loaded]    com.novatelwireless.driver.DisableAutoInstall (2.0.6) Support
    [not loaded]    com.sierrawireless.driver.SierraSupport (1.4.11) Support
    [not loaded]    com.sierrawireless.driver.SierraSwitch (1.2.2) Support
    [not loaded]    com.sierrawireless.driver.SierraSwitchKicker (1.0.0) Support
    [not loaded]    com.smithmicro.driver.SMSIWirelessCDC (3.2.6) Support
    [not loaded]    com.smithmicro.driver.SMSIWirelessModem (3.2.6) Support
    [not loaded]    com.smithmicro.driver.SMSIWirelessSerial (3.2.6) Support
Startup Items: ?
    HP IO: Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP IO
Launch Daemons: ?
    [loaded]    com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support
    [loaded]    com.adobe.versioncueCS4.plist Support
    [running]    com.citrixonline.GoToMyPC.CommAgent.plist Support
    [loaded]    com.google.keystone.daemon.plist Support
    [failed]    com.vmware.launchd.vmware.plist Support
Launch Agents: ?
    [failed]    com.adobe.CS4ServiceManager.plist Support
    [running]    com.citrixonline.GoToMyPC.LaunchAgent.plist Support
    [loaded]    com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support
    [loaded]    com.hp.help.tocgenerator.plist Support
User Login Items: ?
    Dropbox
    SPanel
    HP Scheduler
    HPEventHandler
Internet Plug-ins: ?
    hpvirtualrooms-plugin: Version: (null)
    o1dbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support
    Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 5.2 Support
    Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
    OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: Version: 12.3.6 Support
    Silverlight: Version: 5.1.10411.0 - SDK 10.6 Support
    FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 14.0.0.145 - SDK 10.6 Support
    Flash Player: Version: 14.0.0.145 - SDK 10.6 Outdated! Update
    QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
    googletalkbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support
    iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0
    AdobePDFViewer: Version: 9.5.5 Support
Audio Plug-ins: ?
    BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
    AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9
    AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9
    iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
iTunes Plug-ins: ?
    Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9
3rd Party Preference Panes: ?
    Adobe Version Cue CS4 Support
    Flash Player Support
    GoToMyPC Preferences Support
    Spanning Sync Support
Time Machine: ?
    Skip System Files: NO
    Auto backup: YES
    Volumes being backed up:
        Macintosh HD: Disk size: 297.29 GB Disk used: 294.06 GB
    Destinations:
        Seagate Backup Plus Drive [Local] (Last used)
        Total size: 931.19 GB
        Total number of backups: 2
        Oldest backup: 2013-01-18 20:32:13 +0000
        Last backup: 2013-11-27 07:21:53 +0000
        Size of backup disk: Excellent
            Backup size 931.19 GB > (Disk size 297.29 GB X 3)
    Time Machine details may not be accurate.
    All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
Top Processes by CPU: ?
         6%    firefox
         3%    WindowServer
         1%    plugin-container
         1%    Dropbox
         0%    Mail
Top Processes by Memory: ?
    549 MB    firefox
    82 MB    Mail
    82 MB    Skype
    61 MB    Microsoft Word
    53 MB    com.apple.WebKit.WebContent
Virtual Memory Information: ?
    30 MB    Free RAM
    1.47 GB    Active RAM
    1.45 GB    Inactive RAM
    497 MB    Wired RAM
    2.82 GB    Page-ins
    196 MB    Page-outs
Thank you to any and all who respond to this call!

Verizon Wireless does not now offer—and has not historically offered—the Palm Treo 680. The Treo 680 is a GSM device, and not compatible with the Verizon network. Verizon currently offers the Palm 700p and the 700wx, and has previously offered various Palm and Windows Mobile devices beginning with the Palm Treo 600.
The anomalies you see are likely the result of issues with iSync and the iSync Palm conduit, and not with the device itself. With an advanced Palm device such as any Treo beyond the 600, you should instead opt to use either…
• the Missing Sync for Palm OS, or
• the Missing Sync for Windows Mobile
…selecting whichever one supports the operating system of your particular Treo. In your case with a Treo 680, that's the Missing Sync for Palm OS.
You can learn more about these products by pressing the links above.

Mail search no longer works after 10.7.2 upgrade

The search field in the upper right hand corner no longer returns any results, from any mailbox, regardless of the text I type in. This was working fine until I upgraded to 10.7.2. I absolutely rely on the search feature as my mail messages are a wealth of information for me.
Help!
Brian

I've managed to get it working after trying the following:
1. Used Disk Utility to repair permissions on my main drive
2. In Terminal used the comand "sudo mdutil -v -i on /"
That tells spotlight to turn indexing on for that drive.
3. Did a restart
I'd recommend trying the permissions and a restart first and if that doesn't help then try the command line fix.
The first time I ran it without -v so got no feedback on what it was doing. Stopping it and trying to do it again gave me the message "Error: Index is already changing state. Please try again in a moment." After the restart it now says:
Indexing enabled.
Scan base time: 2011-10-19 07:40:10 +0100 (60 seconds ago), reasoning: 'scan not required - avoided catchup scan'
Now mail is back to how it was before the 10.7.2 update, happy days.

Mail Search no longer works

I found some boards that show potential solutions to a remedy, and I have tried them without success.
Problem: Mail no longer yields results when searching through primary inbox OR all subsequent mail folders. Neither Full body OR to/from info is displayed when trying to do a search. Just "0 results."
I have disabled and re-enabled Spotlight to try and fix. I have re-indexed my mail folders from the command line, and I have even tried to recreate the mail index without success.
Can anyone help?

Not sure if you resolved this by now, but I was having the same problem and I found that my hard drive was in the privacy section of spotlight within system preferences, preventing the search of my mail and everything else on my hard drive for that mater.. Hope this helps

Mail search doesn't work at all / disabled?

I had some spotlight issues and the index was successfully rebuilt. Mail however, still has a disabled search functionality. If I enter a term in the upper right search field no results appear. Rebooting and restoring Mail don't help. Mail is not excluded in the system prefs spotlight settings.
Any idea?

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 $Message' -k Sender mdworker -o -k Message Rne Norm -k Sender mds | tail | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) 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.

Lion Mail search doesn't work

In Snow Leopard, I could search for a friend's name, and select "From" to see all messages sent to me by them. I can't seem to duplicate this in Lion. I type in the name, & all I get is a list of every email that mentions their name for any reason. This seems like a downgrade of functionality. Am I missing something in the interface?

Seems to work here ok:

Why does dictation almost never work?

The vast majority of the time I try to use dictation, it does not work at all. I double click the Fn button, and the microphone comes on. But usually it "maxes" out, or conversely, does not seem to register any sound at all.
Seriously, it happens probably 75% of the time. Then only occasionally it works fine.
If I restart the computer, it works again. But it would be nice if it could be dependably used. I'm not going to restart the computer when I'm in the middle of an email.
As a question b, I heard that dictation would learn your vocal patterns to improve it's performance, but does that require anything from the user? How does it correct itself? I never have the option of clarifying the words for it- I just erease them and correct them.
I have a Mac Book Pro 10.8.2.
Thanks!

Match frame works if you pay attention to the auto-select buttons. To match to an audio track, be sure that no video track is auto-selected. FCP will match to the lowest numbered audio track that is selected. (I hope I have this right - not in front of my system now).
About Find Bin. Yeah, it doesn't work well. If the clip in question was originally captured into another project, then brought into your current project, it will not work. This is a major pain for those like me that have an assistant load tapes in a separate "assistant project."
I make my living with FCP, but this, and a few other "features" really drive me nuts.

Ok...DVI to Video Adapter will almost never work on MAC PRO, what the....

ok
Thank you apple for making us all by the grand Mac Pro and upgrade to better video cards (like in my case 8800gt) and then offering no solution to replace the DVi to Video adapter which allows to have video mirroring.
Anyone has any idea how to make extended desktop or video mirroring work since this adapter is no longer compatible?
Thank you

Yes I know that. my question is regarding what to use for a 8800 card

Mail search almost never working

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