My Mail search feature

My Mail search feature seems to have stopped finding anything. Why? I use this frequently to find old mail in my inbox or sent folder. It stopped finding anything about two weeks ago.

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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

My Mail search feature in Snow Leopard just stopped working

My search feature for Mail in snow leopard just stopped working. I had a system crash while trying to reformat a corrupted flash drive. Now when I search in mail it just spins the color wheel. Any suggestions?

Hello FredBus,
Welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience! To help you get the most out of the HP Forums I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
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OS X Lion Mail - search feature

Searching through the thousands of emails on my laptop used to be easy with Snow Leopard. Within seconds I would search through entire messages, or who I sent to, or received from, or by subject. That simplicity seems to have been bleached out of Lion. Is anybody else having trouble with email search on Lion or is it just me?

I found another issue with the search function. I've noticed the search results do not include email messages placed in an archive folder I've created on my mac. Only messages which are located in the actual inboxes and sent items are included in the search items.
I can also confirm that the "from" list is incomplete. I've the idea that only contacts which are listed in the MS Exchange directory (of my university) are listed, in addition to my own contacts. Senders which I haven't saved in my contact list are missing.
Interesting to not is that spotlight is able to find the messages which are not listed via the Mail search.
Another thing: "entire message" does not include sender information: for instance, mails from dropbox only show up if I select "From", but not when I select "entire message". This is counter intuitive in my opinion. BTW, I just see that the term "dropbox" is almost always included in the main text, so it should show up, even if "entire message" does not search through the "From" section.
I find the new search function quite horrible to use. I hope someone is able to point out what I'm doing wrongly.
UPDATE:
I just created a new mailbox and moved a couple of "old" (pre-lion-received) messages which I was not able to find previously into the new mailbox and guess what happened: I now am able to find via the search funciton
UPDATE 2:
I think something went wrong when I upgraded to Lion. I've rebuilded all my old mailboxes and it now works fine. You can do the same by selecting your mailbox and click Mailbox -> Rebuild.
Message was edited by: Morrey

Apple Mail search feature?

Is there a concise list anyplace that explains how to do boolean searches in Apple Mail, and all the various options?
Have found information scattered here & there, and help file offers general instructions but no information on how to actually make them work. Essentially says "you can do boolean searches".
Couple examples:
"If you began your search in the Spotlight menu in the upper-right corner of your screen, click Show All to switch to a search window."
Where is "Show All"?
Perform a Boolean query
A Boolean query uses AND, OR, and NOT (known as Boolean operators) to narrow the search results. You can also use a minus sign (-), meaning AND NOT, to exclude items when you search. Here are examples of what you might type in the search field when you use Boolean operators:
author:tom OR author:thom searches for items authored by Tom or Thom, if you don’t know the exact spelling of his name.
trip -france searches for items that contain the word “trip” but not “france,” so results might include photos from a trip to Spain but not to France.
Looking to search a message from person A, with the body or subject of the message containing text X. How do you type the second operator (above syntax doesn't seeem to work)? How does one even know what all the operators are without a list in a dialogue box like other email programs have?
Image below is an example of a search. Can't get a second operator to work:
http://tinyurl.com/77unn2w

That the text changes at all is the problem. I simply want to type a word, and search for it. The drop downs limits the choices, apparently, to what Mail thinks you want. If it's not there, you simply can't search.
Example below. I want to search for a message from "Roy". I type "Roy". Mail doesn't have an option to search the "from" field. Have seen that option other times, doesn't appear here for some reason.
Second issue: you can't get any options at all for a second search term without choosing one of the "pre-filled" choices that appear. There were some pre-filled choices further down, none of which applied. Clicking "Message contains "project" leaves you with no choices (to search the subject field, for example).

Mail search feature for Yahoo mail does not work in Firefox

the search box in yahoo mail is unresponsive. Had to open Yahoo mail in Chrome to do the search. I have the latest version of Firefox running on Vista.

Hello,
In order to better assist you with your issue please provide us with a screenshot. If you need help to create a screenshot, please see [[How do I create a screenshot of my problem?]]
Once you've done this, attach the saved screenshot file to your forum post by clicking the '''Browse...''' button below the ''Post your reply'' box. This will help us to visualize the problem.
Thank you!

Mail search function doesn't work

Our Mail Search Function no longer works - does anyone have a fix? the mailboxes have been rebuilt, the envelope files in the library/mail directory have been deleted, and the emails have been re-indexed - still no luck in searching in the mail search feature. This was never an issure before the upgrade. Please provide help if you can ~ Thanks!~

THANKS! Went thru about 90% of the things listed there. Am Currently going thru the suggestion of the spotlight rebuild thru the terminal.
When I looked at the settings as stated here: For server-based accounts (IMAP, Exchange, iCloud, and MobileMe), make sure Mail is set to download entire messages—if it doesn’t, Spotlight can’t index them. Go to Mail -> Preferences, click Accounts, select an account, and click Advanced. Make sure the Keep Copies Of Messages For Offline Viewing pop-up menu says All Messages And Their Attachments.
This option is not viewable or available in my Mail Preference Advance screen and the "Keep Copies of Messages for Offline Viewing...." was not listed in any of the windows - went thru each one. This option was was also mentioned under my "help" - but not finable in the preferences....
Thanks again....

Search feature not working in apple mail

The search feature is not working in Apple Mail Yosemite. I enter keywords and get no results. Is there a fix for this?

Hi!
I have the same Problem... Did u try to delete the "Envelope Index"? ( got to Library/Mail/V2/... delete all files Envelope ... Close Mail before! and then restart Mail.)
I tried that but nothing happen... How tu use Mail without search feature!!
MacBook Pro late 2009, Mac OS Yosemite (10.10)

Search Feature Not Working in Mail 10.7.4

Hi, the search feature is not working properly in Mail since upgrading to 10.7. If I use Spotlight from the desktop, that search will find the particular mail message I'm looking for, but searching directly within mail produces horrible results. I know I can just use spotlight, but sometimes I just want to search within mail. Any suggestions?

Erase and rebuild index:
Open Terminal and type$ sudo mdutil -E /
you'll notice it indexing...

Search Feature in Mail only partly works

Good day,
I have two questions today
1. when I search for a specific sender in my mail for Mac software I doesn't find or rarely finds any of the received messages, basically the search feature FROM doesn't work. When I switch FROM to ALL it will only show my sent messages.
Which setting can I update to fix this?
2. What do I need to use if I wish to search for two words in Mail without seeing results for each individual word?
Thank you very much :-)

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.

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

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.

Search feature in outlook only returning "no results" all of a sudden. Why?

I use outlook for my mail. all of a sudden, the search feature just returns a "no results" solution. Any ideas why?

Options > Privacy = un-check '''Permanent Private Browsing Mode'''

What is the problem with Mail Search???

I've seen all the mentions here of a non-functioning Search feature in Lion Mail - I've experienced it, too. I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and still... no fix. Search does not find emails that I *know* are there. I've rebuilt all the mailboxes, exported and imported all the messages, created "Test" accounts and imported messages files... and still, no joy.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? And WHERE IS THE FIX?
I'm tired of having to go to my Snow Leopard machine to find emails! Help!

Mail uses Spotlight to find emails. It sounds to me like the Spotlight index may have issues. You could try rebuilding it.
To rebuild it just go to the Spotlight system preference, select the privacy tab, and drag your boot hard drive (often called Macintosh HD) to the privacy pane. Then wait about 10 seconds and then click it and hit the - button at the bottom. You'll see the Spotlight icon in the menu bar get a little throbbing dot in the middle and after an hour or two you should have a new index. See if you can then see the emails.

Mac Mail "Search" won't return any results

Hi,
Mac Mail- OS X Yosemite 10.10.2
I'm having trouble with the search feature on my Mac Mail. I'm using an IMAP account with: Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk and trash mailboxes. I also have folders under the "On My Mac" section. When I click on a folder, either "Inbox" or a mailbox "On My Mac" and try and search for an email no results are returned even though there should be multiple hits. I see multiple emails from John Doe prior to entering John Doe in the search bar and no results are returned even when I switch the search criteria to either "From", "To" or "Any".
Also is there any way to search all folders in Mac Mail at once without having to click on each folder and search it individually?
Any help would be appreciated
Thank you
T

First, take all the applicable steps in this support article that you haven't already taken. If the problem isn't solved that way, see below.
Restart the computer in safe mode. Certain caches maintained by the system will be rebuilt.
Safe mode is much slower to start up than normal. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
When the login screen appears, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and test. There's no need to log in while in safe mode.
Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t start in safe mode. In that case, ask for instructions.

My Mail search feature

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