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.

Similar Messages

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

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

Yosemite Apple Mail search not working

Upgraded Mac mini from Mavericks to Yosemite.
Search within Apple mail is not working.
Come to think of it, search everywhere seems to be broken. It's as if Spotlight is not working too well.

FINALLY I found a way to fix this issue, at least for me:
Boot into SAFE mode: OS X Yosemite: Start up in safe mode
Run Applications -> Disk Utility
Click on your hard drive's volume
Click and run Repair Disk Permissions
Reboot
Voila! Fixed at last!
I also found that Alfred was hanging on startup, probably same reason as Alfred uses Spotlight in the background.
No more issues.
What's weird is that I finally bit the bullet and installed Yosemite on my 13" Retina MacBook Pro and had no spotlight issues whatsoever. Weird.

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.
On the keyboard/mouse question, I use the Apple Wireless Keyboard and really like it. (It doesn't have the top plastic cover like other Apple keyboards, so you can really vacuum it out well.) If an ethernet cable is more clutter than you want, the extra cables for the keyboard and mouse will be significant. FWIW, I bought the BlueTake BT500 Bluetooth mouse. It's really tiny, and uses up batteries like they're going out of style (but I use rechargables), but otherwise, it's very nice and since it's so small it reduces wrist fatigue.

Apple Mail search not working for Inbox

In the last few weeks I've notice the Apple Mail (5.2) search feature has stopped working correctly. It used to turn up all relevant results in a mail box, then lately it seems (based on the results) to go back just a few weeks and not the full year of mail that is in the mailbox.
Following the advise of a MacWorld article I removed these files from Mail's library folder… Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal, restarted Mail and followed the prompt to reindex. Following that… Search works worse, I run tests to find a word in the body and get 0 results… and I know it's there. As I type in the last letter of the word into the Seach lozenge I get a list just below the lozenge ) of People and Subjects that contain the word but nada results for the word in the Body of the message. These tests were run on the Inbox, other mailboxes (with List-serve Mail) seem to work ok… but the Inbox Search is what I really care about.
Any ideas about fixing this? Thanks in advance,
Paul

This is very dissapointing.
How can I delete my Mail App and re-install it????????
My mail App on my MacBook Pro 10.8 is working now
But I can not get my Mail App to search anything to display 2013

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 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 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 not working; please help

For some reason the search function in Mail has stopped working. If I click on the Sent folder, tons of emails come up, but when I search, it always comes back blank, when they are definitely there?
Dosn't matter if I search for something I sent 10 minutes ago, yesterday or last week, nothing ever comes up. I have to list by name and look alphabetically which takes ages.
Any ideas?

Not that it's much help, Nigel, but I'm having the same problem. No matter what I search for, I get no result. I CAN find the email in Spotlight, however. Can you? If not, you can rebuild your Spotlight database, and that may fix your problem. See this article ... http://www.macobserver.com/tip/2006/07/21.1.shtml

Mail search not working mavericks

Mail search function is not working in any of my mail accounts...gmail, godaddy hosted domain or icloud.
Tried deleting envelope index files and re-index...still doesn't work. Bummer to have brand new 15" retina mbp all in at $3800 and have these type of issues.

This fix worked for me:
Mail uses Spotlight for search results, so you may want to rebuild the Spotlight index. I tried to just rebuild the mail index first but no success. Rebuilding the entire hard drive did the trick.
Note you can rebuilding Mail's spotlight index by going to the Spotlight system preferences, dragging your hard drive to the privacy pane, waiting 10 seconds, and then removing it. Re-indexing your drive may take an hour or more.

HT6030 mail search not working on mavericks

I have just updated to maverick on my mac book pro (2010 model) and the search option in my mail account is not working.
I use this function constantly so this probelm is extremly frustrating!! HELP!

Don't work!!!!
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5674231?start=15&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5673556?start=45&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/message/24152902#24152902

Mountain Lion Mail Searching not working (entire search)

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.
I tried all of this. Nothing helped yet.
Thanks for help
carl

I really tried everything but nothing helped.
But finally I solved the problem.
I made a timemachine backup (just for safety reasons).
Then I installed Mountain Lion again over the existing installation.
(I used a USB Stick with Mountain Lion to do that.)
Now everything works great.

Lion 10.7 clean install with Outlook 2011 mail search not working

Installed fresh copy of lion on my macbook pro 6,2. Then installed office 2011 and did all the patches. After the macbook pro finished its indexing I started to use my outlook 2011 email and noticed that email search did not work. (Outlook 2011 14.1.2 / Lion 10.7)
I fixed it by forcing another index:
sudo mdutil -E /
sudo mdutil -i on /
Now email search works.
Cheers

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.

Mac Mail Search Not Working

Okay, among the LONG list of things not working since the update, is the Mac Mail search function. I will type in a search for emails from someone (eg. my son, partner, BFF, etc. who email me all the time), and either the system can't find emails from him, can only find ones sent years ago, or produces a list that is not in newest to oldest order (dates all mixed up).
I really rely on my being able to use my mail easily for personal and work use. It's really sad when my other mailbox (Outlook) is working better than mac mail.
Any advice?

Okay, among the LONG list of things not working since the update, is the Mac Mail search function. I will type in a search for emails from someone (eg. my son, partner, BFF, etc. who email me all the time), and either the system can't find emails from him, can only find ones sent years ago, or produces a list that is not in newest to oldest order (dates all mixed up).
I really rely on my being able to use my mail easily for personal and work use. It's really sad when my other mailbox (Outlook) is working better than mac mail.
Any advice?

Mail search not working

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