Search Mail message bodies?

Can I search the message body in Mail like I can in Gmail? I can't seem to find a way to do it and I thought Mountain Lion OSX would allow this.

When you type something in the search field, you should get a choice of what kind of search you want Mail to make, including 'message content':

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Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

Leopard's Spotlight isn't searching email messages. I made a clean install of 10.5, and have two POP accounts. The message files are right there under ~/Library/Mail/... . I rebuilt the index for the system volume by adding and then removing the volume from the Privacy zone in Spotlight preferences. I also tried some of the command-line suggestions posted elsewhere for this problem. I recently added my backup volume to the privacy zone, but other than that the zone is empty.
But the problem remains. Outside Mail.app, Spotlight never comes back with search results that are mail messages. Inside Mail.app, searching "entire message" returns 0 results. Does anyone know how to diagnose this problem? Can I see if a particular file is included in the metadata index?

Hahaaaa! Solved it - at least for me...
Please read the whole explanation first before just gabbing any presented commands and executing them in the Terminal. The solution requires no Terminal.
I had exactly the same problem described by MikeW and JJ. I tried everything like you before at no avail, too. But I tried one more thing that did work and indexed all my mail. Here is what I did at the command line. Don't type the command right away. It will work, but this is not the root cause of your problem, I present it just to explain:
find ~/Library/Mail -name "*.emlx" -exec mdimport {} \;
This searches for the individual message (*.emlx) files themselves and throws them one by one onto the mdimporter which imports them just fine. Still, a plain mdimport ~/Library/Mail would not work which pointed me in the right direction: Spotlight did not "see" these individual message files. But Why?
I fiddled a bit with file/folder permissions since I also simply upgraded from Tiger and ended up with old Tiger permission based user accounts. No result. I discovered, that in Finder the mailboxes, say ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox etc. were displayed as package files instead of folders. Strange. So again I tried mdimport -d1 ~/Library/Mail now with a bit of debugging. Aha! Spotlight imports this folder as type 'dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45mr3wgn8a', or similar, a dynamic UTI, instead of with 'com.apple.mail.mbox' as what it should have been. Since this unknown dynamic UTI dosn't mean anything sensible to Spotlight, it would simply skip the folder, not scanning it's contents with the well known result that mails cannot be searched by content.
So, what is essentially overwriting these UTIs? Especially because this would not happen in another Leopard-created user account. I felt guilty as I added some custom UTIs in the past, but nothing to do with mail at all. So who carries UTIs for Mail.app? Well... Mail.app! Another Mail.app? YES! I remembered, that I had an older complete pre-Spotlight system backup on my current system, including all applications including Mail.app in version 1.3.something. AFAIK only with Mail 2.0 Apple changed the way Mail saves messages and they apparently also changed the UTI of .mbox to the new format. I simply deleted the old version of Mail.app. Immediately after that the icons of the .mbox changed and I could open these folders in Finder. I tried again mdimport ~/Library/Mail and - boom - Spotlight imported all my mails!
Long story to explain my thoughts, here are 5 steps for you to try:
1. Search your system to find out if you have multiple different copies of Mail.app. You can do that with Spotlight/Finder or enter in the terminal:
sudo find / -type d -name "Mail.app" -ls
(You need to be admin to sudo, type your password when prompted)
2. Locate and check the found versions of Mail.app in Finder via the get info window.
3. Delete all but the actual copy of Mail.app in /Applications from your system (empty trash!).
4. Enter the following line in the terminal to have Spotlight import your messages:
mdimport ~/Library/Mail
Should take much longer now, depending on the number of mails you have.
5. Check the result by searching mail content in Mail/Finder/Spotlight, enjoy!
Note: If you did find and delete old versions of Mail.app, but step 4 did not work, you might have to log out and in or you can even try to restart the machine. In my case the result was instant. If all of that did not work for you - sorry - but probably the above helps you to track your particular problem down.
ecke

Searching Mail Messages

Is it just me or is the search function in Apple Mail really bad all of a sudden? I'm searching for messages, which I know are there, and it doesn't find any of them. I have 3 IMAP Google Apps account in Apple Mail and at the moment to search for a specific message I'm having to login to Webmail and then search via Gmail's search function, which then finds the messages I'm after.

One thing thing the cited article doesn't mention is that you can prepare an image that is Spotlight indexed, convert it to a DVD image, and burn that...
With regard to your question, if you know how to use the UNIX command line, open a Terminal window and use grep to search the elmx files. If you don't want to go that route, there are a bunch of desktop search alternatives like Google Desktop which, *I think*, will permit you to to index removable media.

Cannot search mail message content

In Snow Leopard, I used to be able to choose "from", "to" "entire message", "subject". I can't seem to do this with mail in Lion.
Afyter typing in a search term, I get a drop down as I'm typing which shows "people". I presume that is from or to, but no way to find a word that is in the content of a message or a subject.
Can anyone help please?

Followup...
I had previously had WideMail installed. It should just be disabled in Mail under Snow Leopard. However, I downloaded it again and used the Installer Dmg to Uninstall the program.
"Entire Message" is now selectable again.
However, the performance is horrible. Searching through my Gmail Inbox which only has around 200 messages takes several minutes. The other searches seem to have reasonable performance.
Now honestly... this makes no sense to me. There doesn't seem to be a logical connection between the two. However, those were the steps and that was the result. It seems more likely that something else changed in the background while Mail was down.
Message was edited by: ashealey

Mail will no longer search "Entire Message". That option is grayed out. Why?

How do I get Mail to search "Entire Message". That option suddenly is grayed out.

A SMTP is a server for sending messages, and not as an Incoming server. Do you mean an IMAP server?
I did not mean it was for a single message, but the fact that you had a single message in local storage turned the option on, but it could only have search the messages that were in local storage.
Check again in Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced what is selected regarding Keep copies of Messages?
Ernie

I want to exclude Mail messages from showing up in Finder search on OSX Mavericks.

I went to the SysPrefs > Spotlight > Search Results tab and uncheck Mail but all my email messages still show up in finder searches. How do I exclude finder from searching mail?

Thank you very much, this works! I didn't know about that feature, so your help was really vital!

Search entire message not working in Mail, but Spotlight works.

I am having a problem where my mail App is not searching the entire body of the message any more. I installed Lion soon after it was released, and I believe that it has been working up until recently.
If I do a search, it won't search the message body, and gives me no option to search for "Message contains" (just "People" and "Subjects"). If search for subject "foo" and then click on the "Subject" pull down menu, it shows "Subject" and "Entire Message", but "Entire Message" is greyed out.
I've done a lot of web searching and most people with similar problems had problems with Spotlight.
If I do a Spotlight search, it does find all of the mail messages correctly. Its just the Mail app that won't let me search.
I haven't tried re-indexing spotlight yet because spotlight seems to be working okay.
Note that all of my mail accounts are "POP" accounts with the mail stored locally on my machine.
Has anyone else encountered this?
Thanks,
Ron

I should have tried this before posting, but a reboot fixed my problem.

I can't seem to access new mail on my I pad . I can only see strings of messages that are related to each other. I also have lost the ability to search for messages that are no longer on display on my I pad.

I cannot seem to access properly any more the new e mail messages on my I pad. I can only see strings of messages that relate to each other.
Also I cannot search for old messages that have now disappeared . The search bar has disappeared.
Tom

Try a reset: hold down the home button along with the power button until you see the Apple, then let go.

"search entire message" button in mail is sometimes grayed out

Hi, Recently I've noticed that sometimes when I do a search in mail the button to search entire message is grayed out and unclickable. This started happening in the last few days. Just a minute ago I tried to do a search and the button was gray, then I went to Safari and logged into Apple support, went back to mail and typed a new search, and all of sudden the button is clickable again. Any ideas? Running 10.6.7 on a 15" Macbook Pro. Thanks...

Ernie,
I collected the info you require - see below. Along the way I deduced that the problem may be a corrupted Spotlight index. As you'll see below attempting to remove Library or Mail from the index failed. I am currently rebuilding the entire volume index...
Repair permissions - log shows no fixes. Search still fails...
POP-<email> varies from 14.7MB down to 120kb.
Typically the root level of POP-<email> is
Deleted Messages.mbox
Sent Messages.mbox
Drafts.mbox
INBOX.mbox
Junk.mbox
Some account also have "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2"
The root level of INBOX.mbox is typically:
Info.plist [not always]
Messages
POP-steve%[email protected]
has top level
Deleted Messages.mbox
Drafts.mbox
INBOX.mbox
Junk.mbox
MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded
MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2
Sent Messages.mbox
with INBOX.mbox top level of
content_index
Info.plist
mbox
mbox.SKindex
mbox.SKindex.isValid
Messages
tableofcontents
I deleted the out of date indexes, etc.
Spotlight prefs, Privacy, add ~/Library/Mail
"Privacy List Error
The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."
Same Mail operation worked on MBP -- also on MBP Library folder.
Try MacPro Library - same error.
Delete entire MacPro index. More to follow on whether this is the fix...

Mail search won't search Entire Message

When I type anything into the search bar in mail, and have it select to search Entire Message, it won't find anything. Even if I only type 2 characters, it won't find it.
In the SpotLight System Preference, I tried adding the whole drive to the privacy pane and then removing it.

I had this problem too - I can't believe that now at 10.5.8, Apple STILL haven't sorted this out.
I have eventually managed to get search back again (don't want to speak too soon though). Among other things, I did mdimport ~/Library/Mail following the advice in http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5934412#5934412. However, I don't know if this actually had any particular effect, as Spotlight seemed to start a new index run after I had done this (which presumably would override the effects of the specific import).
I have tried most things mentioned - rebuild mailbox, delete Envelope Index after quitting Mail, all sorts of variants of turning Spotlight or different volumes to be indexed or not on or off.
I have not tried (because I don't think they are likely to have any effect) deleting the preferences, switching off and on again, resetting PRAM etc.
I have tried searching for duplicate Mail copies, and searching for .metadataneverindex and disk utility checking permissions on the volumes and manually on the mail folders, and checking by looking that the mail folders are not packages, but come on, I don't think any of these are likely.
Personally, I think it was the virgin sacrifice that fixed it.

Apple Removed Mail Search by Message Content in Lion 10.7.2

Just got off the phone with Apple Support. As usual, they are very helpful. However, I was disappointed to learn that Apple silently removed the ability to search mail by content in the latest update to OSX.
I have OSX Lion 10.7.2, and when I type anything into the search field in Mac Mail (or, interestingly, onwww.me.com), there are options to search only by subject or sender or recipient, not by message content as there used to be.
According to Emily at Apple Support, Apple intentionally removed the search by content feature because "it wasn't working right". They are or MAY be working to add it back in to the next update. No commitments.
Sadly, there was no mention of this DOWNGRADE at the time I installed 10.7.2. And, the knowledge base article herehttp://support.apple.com/kb/DL1458 makes no mention of Mail changes either.
Sad. Confused. And a little bit angry. Apple can and should do better.

Sad. Confused. And a little bit angry. Apple can and should do better.
Well, I agree with #2 out of 4.
I have no problems searching by content in OS 10.7.2. As Barney says, it's the default search state now.

Remove mail messages (vrge080message) from search in Finder

Hello,
I have a large number of mail messages in Entourage (vrge080messages).
When I search for files in Finder, literally hundreds of email messages are found with some search terms. It is frustrating to either sort them first and then scroll through to find the document / (usually .doc or .pdf) I'm after.
Is there any way to tell Finder to stop finding vre080 messages (entourage messages)? Ie. Can I turn this part of the search function off? Is there somewhere to control Finder Preferences to this level ?
With thanks
cmmacbookpro.

My solution has been to use EasyFind and permanently disable the useless and highly intrusive Spotblight, which is also used as the search engine for the Finder.
After all these years, I've never felt the need to re-enable Spotblight.
2.5 GHz Power Mac (PPC) G5-Quad; 16GB RAM; mutant, flashed 550MHz nVidia GeForce 7800GTX, 1,700MHz 512MB VRAM; ATTO ExpressPCI UL5D LP SCSI card; Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 and Leopard 10.5.8 boot drives; Spotblight, Dashboard and Time Machine permanently disabled; dual 22" CRT monitors; USB wireless 'n' available but connected to the Internet via wired Ethernet; FW flatbed scanner; 2 SCSI scanners (one tabloid-size transparency scanner and a film scanner); various internal & external HDs; FW Epson 2200 and Ethernet Samsung ML-2850ND printers; 2 X Back-UPS RS 1500 XS units.

Search 'Entire Message' in Mail on network account.

Hello -
Recently an issue has come up where my users are unable to choose the "Entire Message" option when performing a search in Mail. "From", "To" and "Subject" all work fine.
All of my users are running latest updates of 10.6 and 10.7 and all are on network accounts. This is not a new problem, but it's a new question that came up a few months ago and I've been scraping for an answer since then.
-I understand that for the "From, To and Subject" search options, Mail handles them separately in the Envelope Index file.
-Spotlight is responsible for the Entire Message option.
-I had to force spot light to index the user folder through terminal using mdutil and specifying "~/". The user folders are not on local storage so Spotlight ignores them.
After forcing mdutil to index - a spotlight search will return results as I would expect - searching entire message but, Mail still does not allow for the Entire Message search option.
Please let me know if more information would help. Thank you in advance.

Maybe I just needed to talk it out, but I think I've sorted it out on my own.
I went to the Account Prefs > Offending Mailbox and under the heading:
"Keep copies of messages offline for viewing" from "Dont Keep Any..." to "All..."
Then I went to Mailbox>Rebuild in the menubar and Bang!
Results!
Now I'm just waiting for the rebuild to finish to see what kind of hit my HD is going to take.

10.6.7 apple mail - search 'entire message' is greyed out

10.6.7 apple mail - search 'entire message' is greyed out
can't use it - other choices ok
was working yesterday...
hw do I get it back?

See the discussions at:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15146088#15146088
Can be temporary with POP perhaps, but should work. With IMAP, it is required that copies of messages be kept for local searching.
More info, please.
Ernie

Spotlight Searches of Encrypted Mail Messages

Greetings,
Is there a way to get Spotlight to search the contents of encrypted mail messages?
I have a number of messages in my Mail folders that have been signed with Digital IDs. Spotlight will not search the contents of these messages (headers and subjects seem to be ok).
I have tried checking the "Encrypted Messages" in preferences and have reindexed the Mail folder with no luck.
Thanks.
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

On the top of my head, I would suggest that you could search for sender, date, etc., in encrypted emails, but as the contents is encrypted, you would need to know the makeup of the encryption. For example, if you were looking for a message with the word "warning", you would have to type in the encryption, e.g., "%r^:&x$' of that word to find it. Otherwise why encrypt the contents in the first place.
If for example, Spotlight could find by contents in an encrypted message, anyone who can intercept you email would be able to read your mail.

Search Mail message bodies?

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