Mail search broken

Until I did the 10.10.3 supplemental update yesterday all was fine. But now if I try to search for emails, using the search box in the top right corner, it shows the list of people whose name match the text I've typed OK, but if I click one it just shows "Searching..." and never finds anything. I'be quit and relaunched Mail, and Rebuilt the database, but to no avail. Any idea?
Andrew

I've just done another restart (I did one to try and fix the first issue) and now everything seems to be working.
Strange.
Thanks for your help.
Andrew

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Archive folder missing from Mail & search not working

I've been having trouble getting the Archive mailbox to appear in Mail. What's worse, often the search function is broken, and Mail doesn't turn up any search results. I've found some ways to get the Archive folder to reappear, but these only seem to help temporarily. For instance, clicking on the gear at the bottom left and selecting "Get Account Info" then selecting the Archive folder causes it to reappear, but this is only temporary and it disappears after another restart or sometimes after an hour or two. The search not working is the worst, as it sometimes is working and sometimes isn't. I don't have any idea what's causing this, but I am at my wit's end because I NEED Mail to be firing on all cylinders.

Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.
What are your selections in Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced for this Gmail account, if using IMAP, regarding keeping message for Offline use? The Mail search can only access the list of messages to search Subject, From, etc, but not the entire message unless copies of all messages are being kept on the computer. This would be true for any IMAP account, btw.
More info, please.
Ernie

Mail search not working, at all

Mail search is not working AT ALL for me. 0 results for things that should have hundreds of results. Have tried most of the suggestions here already - repaired permissions, deleted envelope index files, rebuilt mailboxes, etc.
Just broken. Also, these "support communities" seem to be a downgrade from the old discussion boards IMO. Harder, not easier, to find info.

I am having the same problem, I can search last names and sometimes get a couple of results to show up, though for the most part I get nothing, even when I know the word is in the subject line and email address.

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

Mail search in iOS 7 doesn't allow me to select messages from results for Exchange account

I perform an Exchange mailbox search and after getting the results I tap on Edit to select some of the messages from the listed search results but I can't select any and the options for Move, Delete and Mark are greyed out.
If I do the search on the Gmail mailbox instead, the selection circle is available, I can select individual messages and the options for moving, etc. are all available.

OK - unless a miracle happens in the next 5-10 minutes - apple's current stance on this is that we (corporate users) are going to have to work on this problem on our side of it!
I asked - so you expect hundreds, thousands of server admins (internal employee supported and hosted) to change their settings for you - rather than you changing the way the search app works? Response was YES!!!!
They recognize that it is happening as a result of the 'expanded' search functionality, that WE asked for. Uh-hum it was working before and not now - don't think we asked for that.
They say that they have no intention of fixing what's broken in the app. They consider it to not be broken - but rather improved. WOW!
They are CLEARLY catering to the 'hey where you gonna be tonight' crowd - rather than the 'We need to meet up at 3:00pm to go over these final plans so that I can authorize the next phase of building.' and the 'Go ahead and plan for the 2 mergers we discussed to move forward - I am canceling the third, though' crowd.
Yes - I am venting.....
I am supposedly being transferred to the 'enterprise support team' now. Tech tells me I never mentioned that it was an 'enterprise' issue. I'm like - really - exchange account - and I mentioned the corporate impact of the problem from the beginning. Anyway - we'll see where I get.
Just FYI - their search tool is supposedly returning these results because ALL of our servers are searching and seeing a server setting that allows it to search historical info ON the server. He says it happened this way in io6 - but it did not (thus we searched fine before and not now). I have two users (iPhone 5) who upgraded and have the problem - and one user (iPhone 5) who has not upgraded and does not have the problem.
OK - just got off the phone with apple. I was just transferred to the enterprise team - who said that rackspace could pay $700 and then apple would look into the problem. No, I am not joking. I recommend that you all continue to post your problems with the mail search as often as possible - and hopefully apple will take some responsibility and fix the issue on the app side - rather than asking us to all supposedly fix it on the server side.
I am contacting my exchange server admin to see if there is in fact a setting that will 'fix' the ghosting of the emails. If there is in fact a server side work around - I will post back. If apple gets smart and decides that fixing broken corporate features matters to them - I will also post back.
Any suggestions from the IT world reading this?

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.

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.

Spotlight & Mail Search Not Working After Deleting email Account's '.OfflineCache' File. How Do I Get Back to Normal?

Running OSX 10.7.4 and Mail.5.2.
One of 3 email accounts was constantly trying, but unable to synch. The rotating splines were turning non-stop but not synching (other two email accounts worked just fine.) After doing some searching on the internet, I found several articles about this. Many included the symptom of the "Recovered Messages" constantly being recovered/generated. I had noticed that I would get some recovered messages on occaision, but had never noticed it to be problematic. These articles suggested that the ".OfflineCache" file for that email account had been corrupted or the root of my problem. So, I deleted the .OfflineCach file as per this article...
Fix OSX Mail Creating Multiple 'Recovered Message
Well that got my mail working again. However, I soon noticed that spotlight no longer works and when I try to search mail, it doesn't work. It will only return a complete email address/contact; it doesn't search the contents of the email.
I tried to get spotlight to re-index the hard drive. However, when I try to drag a folder or volume to it, I get the error:
Since spotlight and mail search have always worked flawlessly for 5 years, I'm confident this is related to having deleted " .OffflineCache" for that particular email account. However, it seems strange that mail search won't work for the other email accounts.
Any other tips for getting spotlight back online?
How about the .OfflineCache file. Will Mail restore it, replace it on it's own?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also, looking back, not long before this problem started, I was trying to send a single email with numerous pictures ( around 50 or so.) I forgot to select "medium" for the picture size and it started trying to upload them at full size. I realized this after a minute or two and cancelled the upload, changed to 'medium' and sent the email with no problem. I point this out because the "Multiple Recovered Messages" error seems to be related to or being induced by having an excessively large file in the particular mail account's .Offline.Cache file.

Well, a couple days later and it seems that the .offlinecache has been rebuilt. Finder, Spotlight, & Mail search all seem to be working normally now!

Mail search not working

I've tried several times to perform a search for the word "marin" in my emails... I know that a guy emailed me a week or so ago and said he was in Marin county, so I know that it's there...but for some reason when I search for it within Mail, no results come up.
I decided to try this with a bunch of different words... none of them work. The only way I'm able to search for content within my messages is to search by name in the "To" or "From" sections of the search menu...
Any suggestions?

make sure your Mail folder is indexed by spotlight. go to system preferences->spotlight->privacy pane. what do you have there? if Mail folder is not excluded try reindexing your home directory. add your home folder to the privacy pane for about 5 seconds and remove it from there. it should be reindexed. if that does not help reindex the whole hard drive in the same way. try mail search then.

Mail search not working properly

Just upgraded to ML and the search function in mail just isn't working properly, I didn't think the Lion mail search was great but this one seems 10 times worse. If I search for words contained within a message, the results only show messages from the last couple of months even though I know there's dozens of messages containing the same word from the last couple years.
I tried repairing permissions and rebooting. Still same issue.
If I manually open an old message, and then perform a search, that particualar message will get included in the results, but I can't open thousands of emails just for the search to index them.

You should try rebuilding your Spotlight index, as that's what Mail uses.
Go to Spotlight preferences, and drag your boot drive (probably called "Macintosh HD") into the privacy pane. Say OK to the warning. Then after about 10 seconds, remove it. The whole drive will be re-indexed (this will take a couple hours) and then search should work again.

Mail search not working + Spotlight keeps indexing

I have an old problem that has resurfaced after creating a new user on my Mac. Mail search brings no results and Spotlight is constantly indexing - day in, day out. It never seems to get there. I tried turning my hard drive to private in Spotlight settings and then taking it out. Previously Spotlight seemed to get bogged down with external drives now it's stuck indexing my Mac.
Any advice? Is there a way I get unstick this?

I can't believe that Apple have STILL not sorted this out. I haven't created a new user (so it's nothing to do with that), but Mail.app won't find anything when searching "Entire Message" in the current Mailbox or in "All Mailboxes". This has been ongoing since Leopard was first released, and we are now up to 10.5.8 without this being fixed.
Here are some of the reports:
Topic : Spotlight does not search Mail messages
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1366101
Topic : Search "Entire Message" returns "0 Found" in mailboxes
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1341832
Topic : Spotlight died on me
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226645
Topic : I can't search through my inbox!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1387827
Topic : Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1219030
Topic : Mail Search
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1347387
Topic : Mail Won't Search
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1204827
Topic : Search does not work
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1254966
Topic : Mail search not working
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1289253
Topic : Unable to Search Mailbox
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1232504
Topic : Why is Search in Mail.app busted?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1403758
Topic : Mail Search comes up empty
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1378473
Topic : Search "Entire Message" not working with Smart Mailboxes?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6548355&#6548355
Topic : Mail searches yield no results! Smart mailboxes also yield no results!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1395508
Topic : 10.5.2 Mail.app search still not working (Entire Message)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1389466

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.

Mail search no longer looks past last 30 days or so

Using the search function in the same manner as ever, the results no longer go back further than early July (today is the 31th).
This also affects the Smart Mailboxes, which sort out client mail, etc.
Restarting does nothing. Mailbox rebuild option is grayed out.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Eric D.

Eric,
I do not experience this, and Mail Search is working normally.
What type of account are you using -- POP, IMAP or .mac?
If you have two or more accounts, then Rebuild will not be available until you click on the black triangle beside each standard Icon section to reveal, for example, the Inbox for each separate account.
More info, please.
Ernie

Paypal email message content not found in Mail search

I've looked on the net and can't find any one else reporting this problem so it has to be something at my end.
My Mail search cannot find any word found in the message body of an email from Paypal.
I just upgraded to Yosemite so thought it was a problem with the new OS as I've been able to search message content in OS 10.8 (and previous) for years.
However...
I just re-started using a cloned HD with my old 10.8 OS on it and the search isn't working now.
It finds everything else asked but nothing in a Paypal email.
This includes messages in my inbox and messages stored in various "On My Mac" folders.
I seem to remember this happened before, maybe 2004/2005?? Which ever OS version I was using then?
It couldn't be worked out so I moved over to Microsoft Entourage.
I don't want to switch email software again but the lack of ability to search is causing me some problems.
I did open an Apple support case on this and they couldn't give me an answer but said it had been reported already and may be looked at for a fix in forthcoming OS revisions.
Funny how no one's asked this on any community pages.
Any ideas?? Am I missing something. I don't understand how it's worked on my older OS for years and now suddenly it's stopped.
Does search need anything to find words in content that I may have inadvertently changed?

I have now gone back to my OS 10.8 disc and re-built the folder with my paypal emails in and it is now searching ok so forget what i said earlier.
I'd edit the original post but it won't let me???

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 broken

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