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

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Upgraded Mac mini from Mavericks to Yosemite.
Search within Apple mail is not working.
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FINALLY I found a way to fix this issue, at least for me:
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May be something here.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3899
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http://ipadhelp.com/ipad-help/ipad-cant-send-emails-troubleshooting-steps/
iPad Mail
http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/mail/
Try this: Delete the account in Mail and then set it up again.
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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!

Spotlight and mail searches not working, but...

I contacted Apple Support by phone and they had me go through all of the procedures to re-index the meta data and so on on my iMac and still my Spotlight and Mail searches are not working properly. (I cannot find certain files even though I know they exist...more often than not!) Supposedly, when I "forced" a re-index operation by going to Spotlight Preferences and changing Privacy settings for the entire hard disk and then changing them back, the Spotlight icon on the top right of the menubar was supposed to indicate that re-indexing was taking place, but that never happened. It seems that I possibly have a corrupt metadata file which just won't re-index, or some kind of permission changed which doesn't allow re-indexing to happen, or SOMETHING like that.
Is there a singular hidden "index" or metadata file on the Mac under Lion where this information is stored, can I get at it so I can trash it, and if I do, will the computer automatically rebuild a new index file (if such a singular file even exists)?
I asked this question at a semi-local Apple Store Genius Bar as well, and they were scratching their heads. I have not yet brought the machine in to the store --- if I can avoid that lengthy step, I'd much prefer to fix this here in my office. (The machine works fine otherwise, and I need it here all the time, it's just that searching doesn't work)
I have also tried a re-install over the existing OS (leaving all my apps and documents in place), but have not tried a complete erase-and-install installation. I have a complete Time Machine backup of the entire drive, but the question remains...if I use Apple Migration Assistant to bring the apps and documents back in from Time Machine after doing a "clean" install on a wiped-clean hard drive, won't Time Machine also restore the old metadata that I suspect is corrupt? If so, how would I go about restoring all of my apps and documents without the use of the Migration Assistant or the Time Machine backup file (which may contain a corrupt index file)? If I do a hard drive clone with one of the available utilities dedicated to that purpose, how do I restore JUST the things I need (including serial numbers, etc) without risk of bringing over "bad" index files?
By the way, this machine was running Snow Leopard for well over a year before I upgraded to Lion, with no searching problems whatsoever.
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Hi Linc,
I was able to get some text to appear by choosing "All Messages" from the Error Log list. Here's what I got when i filtered "mdworker" (I have indicated where I removed repetitions):
3/14/12 9:24:10.617 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
failed to parse embedded CMap.
3/14/12 9:24:10.617 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
syntax error, unexpected DICTSTART.
[about a dozen instances of the above two lines were removed]
3/14/12 9:24:10.622 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
*** process 2211 exceeded 500 log message per second limit - remaining messages this second discarded ***
3/14/12 9:24:26.203 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
[Five instances of the above line were removed]
3/14/12 9:24:55.603 PM
mdworker
Unexpected EOF, returning last token as fallback
3/20/12 3:54:30.197 PM
mdworker32
kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.
3/20/12 3:54:30.735 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
3/20/12 3:54:30.736 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
3/20/12 3:54:30.736 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
And here is what I got when I filtered using "mds" (since these are all at different times, I didn't remove duplicates):
3/14/12 9:35:35.672 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/14/12 10:45:54.051 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/14/12 11:45:55.907 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 12:45:53.271 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 1:45:52.702 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 2:45:52.837 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 3:45:52.046 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 4:45:51.586 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 5:45:51.996 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 6:45:52.049 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 7:45:51.647 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 8:46:05.149 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 1:27:56.526 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 2:25:20.942 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 3:26:14.623 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 4:26:06.091 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 5:26:29.923 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 9:48:38.902 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 10:15:02.995 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 7:55:44.632 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 8:07:28.002 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 4:28:06.236 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 4:31:05.891 PM
mds
(Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/CAROLLE' (fd=15) left open on device 234881032
3/19/12 5:19:52.696 PM
mds
(Normal) FMW: FMW 0 0
3/19/12 5:19:52.704 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Root store set to FSOnly with matching create! (loaded:1)
3/19/12 5:19:59.291 PM
mds
(Warning) Server: No stores registered for metascope "kMDQueryScopeComputerIndexed"
3/19/12 5:20:31.340 PM
imagent
[Warning] Creating empty account: Default for service: IMDService (SubNet)
3/19/12 6:29:40.573 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/19/12 9:15:43.527 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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(Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/CHUBER' (fd=22) left open on device 234881032
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(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 9:46:04.479 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 5:23:56.550 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
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Mail search not working, here's what I tried so far

Hi folks,
The problem: Search in Mail no longer works. I can search for a mail that came in 5 minutes ago (and I’m looking at it in my inbox or one of the folders) but Mail won’t find it. Spotlight in the Finder seems OK but it has periods where it can’t find stuff or just doesn’t work at all. This problem did not start when I upgraded to Yosemite, it started a few days ago (at least I don’t recall this problem before this week). When I do a search for an email address, the search box does suggest names of people that I may be looking for but once clicked, 0 results.
Troubleshooting tried so far:
1. Rebuilt spotlight index on Macintosh HD and all other drives - issue persists.
2. Rebuilt spotlight on just the ~/Library/Mail folder - Fix but breaks again after roughly 10 minutes.
3. Deleted Envelope Index files in Mail/V2/MailData folder, start mail and let it import - issue persists.
4. Rebuilt mailboxes - Fix. Can now search in rebuilt folder but only once. Have to rebuild after every search.
5. Disk Utility permissions repair - issue persists.
6. Recovery partition ACL repair - issue persists.
7. DiskWarrior on Macintosh HD - Fix, lasted about a day.
8. Archive and install - issue persists (and made Finder spotlight functionality worse).
9. Erase and install, import from drive clone - Fix, lasted a few hours (Finder spotlight fixed for an hour).
10. The above with a freshly downloaded 10.10.1 installer, incase something was wrong with the original - Issue persists.
11. Safe boot, repair permissions and drive - issue persists.
12. Switched to Classic View in Mail - issue persists.
- Have not touched the preferences, modification dates show these files have not changed for many months.
- Archive/clean installs were done with drive encrypted and unencrypted, made no difference.
Other Info:
I have been migrating my Mail from system to system since early 2003. Never had any issues, ever, until now. The Mail folder is 20GB in size, never experiences slow downs, spinning ball etc, it has always been very fast in scrolling through content and searches. All Mail is stored in folders (sorted by rules) on the Mac, nothing is kept on the mail servers except recent stuff in the Inboxes that has not been sorted yet. Junk and Trash are emptied multiple times a day. 9 mail accounts are set up and in use.
I want to stay far away from an erase and install, setup as brand new. Rebuilding Mail alone will take days if not weeks. I am hoping for suggestions I have not thought about. I have read a lot of similar threads where people experience the same or similar issues but I have not found any solutions.
During all this I have kept an eye on the Console. Some of the things I made note of:
- 12:36:25.561 AM Mail[1212]: Metadata.framework [Error]: server port invalidated for uid 501
- 12:36:39.088 AM mds[1244]: (DiskStore.Warning:967) MLMailReadFixUp repair issued for 0 items
- 12:36:39.088 AM mds[1244]: (DiskStore.Warning:967) MLMailFlagsFixUp repair issued for 0 items
- 12:36:40.000 AM kernel[0]: process Mail[1212] thread 26333 caught burning CPU! It used more than 50% CPU (Actual recent usage: 75%) over 180 seconds.
- 12:54:04.879 AM mds[1476]: (DiskStore.Warning:967) MLMailReadFixUp repair issued for 0 items
I don’t know if Mail utilizes Spotlight as it has it’s own index files (right? the envelope indexes) but spotlight is having plenty of issues as well. I don’t know if Mail or Spotlight is the problem. Spotlight is ALWAYS indexing, always. No way to see how much time is left or anything. Any help appreciated!

I would concur. But, I'd even push for the Core Solo, if price is a real issue for you.
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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.

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This fix worked for me:
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Hello,
I already searched the web and the topics in this forum, but found no help.
Since my update from 10.7 to 10.8 (with a clean install and a transition of my user data) the search 'Entire Message' oder 'any' does not work anymore. It shows no results.
This is very strange since Spotlight is still able to find content inside Mail messages.
There are some posts for similiar questions suggesting to rebuild either the whole spotlight index or just rebuild the mail index.
Others suggest to rebuild the mail database by either deleting the files inside the folder of the library or use the menu command in Mail.
Others suggest to check the rights of the mail folder and its content inside the user's library folder.
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carl

I really tried everything but nothing helped.
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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.

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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.
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This is very dissapointing.
How can I delete my Mail App and re-install it????????
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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.
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You should try rebuilding your Spotlight index, as that's what Mail uses.
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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.
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Mail search not working + Spotlight keeps indexing

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