Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

I forgot to add that this took me days to complete as all the re-indexing took hours and I had several problem fonts.

Good Luck


Thanks ... Ken

I used this guy's approach from a related thread ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6488633#6488633), except I only had to do step one: open Font Book and select "Resolve All Duplicates." Everything works perfectly now. Bizarre but there you have it.

Good luck!

I opened Font Book and resolved all duplicates, but it made no change in Mail not being able to search on "All Messages", even after a reboot.

Font book resolving dupes does not work.

Thanks ... Ken

Just installed 10.5.2, hoping it might fix it. It does not. 😟

You are not alone. Spotlight is broken. It won't search Mail messages correctly.

So far, nothing I've tried has given me the ability to search Mail messages under "Entire Message" for any mailboxes.

"From," "To," and "Subject" searches work, but not "Entire Message."

Doing *mdimport ~/Library/Mail* in Terminal adds current messages to an "Entire Message" search for "All Mailboxes" but does not help an individual mailbox search, nor search any new messages.

_Here's what I've tried:_

Fixed permissions with Disk Utility

Re-booted (many times)

Dragged the hard drive icon to Spotlight's Privacy window, then off again

Installed 10.5.2 from Software Update

Re-installed OS X 10.5.2 from the combo update

Ran Diskwarrior 4.1 Rev. 42, did both a rebuild of the startup HD, and Files

_In Terminal:_

Turned off indexing, then back on again
sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -i on /

Turned off indexing, deleated the Spotlight index, turned indexing back on again
sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -r .Spotlight-V100
sudo mdutil -i on /

Deleated the never index file (there was none)
sudo rm .metadata neverindex

Tried to rebuild the index
sudo mdutil -E /

Added Mail to the index
mdimport ~/Library/Mail
Received an error message: mdimport[188:807] * Failed to decode 8bit data, treating as binary

Doing mdimport ~/Library/Mail adds messages to the "Entire Message" "All Mailboxes" search, but no new messages get indexed.

_Genius at Apple Store:_

I spent two hours with a Genius at an Apple Store, he tried everything he knew, plus all of the above, plus asked another Genius for help. They were unable to fix Spotlight's search.

_Apple Discussions:_

I have asked this question on Apple Discussions. Several others are experiencing the same problem. So far no one has been able to come up with a solution. The number of people with this problem is growing:

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


Obviously, something is broken.

*PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK TO APPLE:*
In Mail, under Mail in the Menu, use "Provide Mail Feedback" to send your feedback to Apple. This sends general information to Apple about your Mail set-up, which should help them get this resolved.

If you do not wish to send them general info from Mail, you can use this link to send feedback:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

Terrell

Try my solution posted earlier in this thread in the order presented ... I had exact problem and have been problem free since.

Hope it works ...

Font Book resolving font issues does not work.

Putting Hd in privacy pane then removing it does not work.

ken

I was finally able to get Spotlight and Mail searches working again, but they way I did it was not pretty. Do not do this!

I followed a link to a web site which suggested using the Terminal command (which is what Ken suggests earlier in this thread):
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight* to remove all traces of Spotlight.
WARNING: This command is very dangerous!

I accidently typed it thus (DO NOT DO THIS!):
sudo rm -rf / .Spotlight*

See the difference? There is a space after the slash.

What does it do?
sudo = run the following command with root priveleges. root has the permission to do ANYTHING on the system

rm = remove a file

-rf = The r means do it recursively, removing empty folders. The f mean force (ie. don't ask if you really want to remove each file)

"/ .Spotlight*" (with the space) means passing two things to remove to the command instead of one: remove the folder "/" and also everything whose name begins with ".Spotlight" from the CURRENT folder. "sudo rm -rf /" means "Using root privileges, remove all files and folders (and everything they contain) from my computer without asking if you're sure you want to remove them."

I was watching the Console when I did this, and was startled to see so many files being listed, then noticed that the icons of files and folders in the Finder window in the background were disappearing!

_So through my typo, I was erasing the whole hard disk!_

A CTRL-C stopped the process, but the damage was done. Every application was already gone.

So I got a chance to find out if Time Machine really worked. Fortunately, I had a current backup.

BTW, _never use Terminal commands without having a current back up. You can do some serious damage!_

After a Restore from Time Machine (took four hours), I needed to Fix Permissions (the Group was incorrect on 15,000 files).

Time Machine and Spotlight ran full blast for some time. I just let it run overnight.

When I first ran Mail again, it acted as though it was the first time it was run, and asked if it could import my Mailboxes. When it was through importing all my mailboxes, Search worked again!

So - how to fix the broken Search in Mail? Maybe just make a complete backup of everything, then restore it will do the trick.

I'm also having this problem - really frustrating. Apple please fix this!

Hi Mick,

Just so you know, Apple does not necessarily read these discussions, they are for users to help other users.

In order for Apple to know about it, you need to send them Feedback. You do this with the "Provide Mail Feedback" item under the "Mail" Menu in Mail.

This finally worked for me:


1) Backed up my data
2) Downloaded "MainMenu" ( http://www.santasw.com/)
3) Cleaned out every system and user cache that I could with MainMenu.
4) Ran every other maintenance or cleaning task.
5) Repaired permissions.
6) Asked MainMenu to delete my Spotlight index.
7) Waited for OS X to start reindexing. It did... took about an hour.
8) Started up Mail... "Search Entire Message" was unavailable at first, and then it came back.

good luck.

I had the same problem.

I solved it with "Archive and Install"

This clear the problem of spotlight and mail search. Once and for all.

I have tried mdutil, doesn't work all the time.

Jessica, that's great to hear that it worked for you! Thanks for sharing it.

I was talking to tech support (actually I got bumped to a product specialist) for quite a while today and finally got this problem solved. Here was what happened (from memory):

Start Mail
Manually load your mail from the server (to get to a known 'current' state)
Quit Mail
Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.*
Delete ~/Library/Caches
Move ~/Library/Mail to the desktop in preparation for a subsequent import
logout
login
Start Mail
Setup your account by providing your email address & email password etc. at the prompts.
Wait while any/all of your emails on the server get read in again.
Select all those new emails in your InBox and delete them
File -> Import Mailboxes and select the Mail folder on your desktop
Let the import occur, Spotlight indexing occurs along the way
Drag the various mailboxes within the new Imported mailbox back to their usual locations
Test if Mail can now search contents like it's supposed to
Delete the Mail folder on the desktop when you're happy it all worked

It all worked for me, and subsequent received emails are all indexing just fine.

Good Luck.

Thanks Jessica!

I have finally got it to work.

Actually, "Archive and Install" is not as easy as it sounds. Give yourself a night and a day to do it! You need to go back to the original Leopard install disk. The explanation is here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301270. Even though I used the "Preserve Users and Network Settings" the install stopped at less than a minute from the end (after a couple of hours) and would progress no further. So I quit the installer and, ignoring all the dire warnings, restarted. Everything was fine except not all the settings got transfered, so I had to manually move a load of preference files.

Now you need to upgrade using Software Update to get to where you were when you started, and also it is best to reinstall all software from original disks (what a pain). After I got Address Book back up to speed, Mail ceased to open at all, and this was fixed by reinstalling com.apple.mail.plist from the latest Time Machine backup.

Finally, when everything was back together again, I can now search on individual folders with in Mail using Entire Message.

I hope this works for others too.

Paul