SmartFolder doesn't locate Mail messages

Spotlight search includes Mail messages, but when using the same criteria for a Smart Folder, Mail messages are NOT included. Is this by design, or an anomaly?
Yes, I know I could use a Smart Mailbox, but I'd like a SmartFolder on my desktop that would include correspondence along with the other items that meet my criteria.
PowerMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Mike has it nailed. You can create your own Smart Folder WITHOUT the exclusion. Thus if you created Smart Folder that searches for pinkmutant the actual query that is executed is this:
(* = "pinkmutant*"wcd || kMDItemTextContent = "pinkmutant*"cd) && (kMDItemContentType != com.apple.mail.emlx) && (kMDItemContentType != public.vcard)
So email and vcards are silently excluded from the search. What you can do is instead of typing the term in the Search box, go to the Other item in the criterion drop down menu, scroll down the list and select Raw Query, then enter just this in the Raw Query search box:
(* = "pinkmutant*"wcd || kMDItemTextContent = "pinkmutant*"cd)
It will now search for items whose text contains pinkmutant, including email and vcards.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

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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 {} \;
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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

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try
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I changed my gmail password after suspicious activity was detected. It works fine on my computer but my iphone 5 doesn't recognize my new password ("cannot get mail" message). I've tried changing my phone settings to the new password, but no good.

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Hello there dinadinadina,
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Get help with Mail on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Restart your iOS device.
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Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Tap the affected email account.
Tap Delete Account.
Add your account again.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Take care,
Sterling

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OK, sorry if this is too basic and belongs in the Getting Started folder, but I couldn't find the problem here or in that location.
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Keith Montreal wrote:
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