mail search completely broken in Catalina

This solved my problem. My search was broken too. I followed the stop/start spotlight as mentioned in the post above and the search is gradually coming back to normal. I think Spotlight needed a kick to get moving.

Summarizing from the link:

1) Launch the Terminal.app (Just copy/paste the string starting with sudo.... and press return)

2) Stop Spotlight and remove the indexing: # sudo mdutil -i off -E / <return>

3) Enable it again by typing: # sudo mdutil -i on / <return>

To fix that issue.

1) Quit Mail.app

2) Stop, Clear, and Restart your Spotlight indexation. To do so : https://support.apple.com/HT201716 OR

• Open Terminal.app
• Stop and Flush Indexation
• sudo mdutil -i off -E /
• verify the status
• sudo mdutil -s /
• Restart it
• sudo mdutil -i on /
• verify the status again
• sudo mdutil -s /

3) Clear the Mail.app indexes. You will find some "Envelope Index*" files in your ~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData folder. Trash them and empty the Trash. (They will be rebuild after relaunching Mail.app, don't worry).

To do so:

• From the Finder > Goto Menu > Go to folder: "~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData".
• From the Terminal.app: "open ~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData" (then Enter)

Restart your Mac. Re-open Mail.app, and all we be fine again.

PS: You need all those steps, and in this order ;-)

The Shift Open Mail twice and then reboot and reopen mail fixed mine!!

1. Close mail completely
2. Hold Shift and click on Mail
3. Close mail completely
4. Hold Shift and click on Mail
5. Close mail
6. Reboot
7. Open Mail
8. Smile again!

I had the same issue on my MacBook after upgrading to Catalina. Contacted Apple support who made me Shift+restart mail twice, and then rebooted Catalina. Mail search started working as normal after the reboot.

Hope this helps.

I went to system preferences, internet accounts and switched off my Gmail, leaving an exchange and imap account active. I turned my computer off and back on and search worked perfectly fine, I then re-added my Gmail account and it all seems to be working. I'd guess there's something in the gmail indexing settings that isn't playing well with catalina's new spotlight mail search integration.

Well, i've done the same procedure and i can confirm that the problem seems to be related to Gmail accounts.

After this operation searches on Exchange accounts started to work correctly.

Searches on GMAIL account are still not working

I had this problem and traced it to an com.apple.quarantine attribute apparently added to the entire Mail directory during the Catalina install. The solution, previously described here, is the following Terminal command:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Users/[YourUserName]/Library/Mail 

After successful execution of this command, wait a few minutes for Spotlight to re-index.

Yes, this is the fix that totally worked for me. Thank you!

"The Shift Open Mail twice and then reboot and reopen mail fixed mine!!

1. Close mail completely
2. Hold Shift and click on Mail
3. Close mail completely
4. Hold Shift and click on Mail
5. Close mail
6. Reboot
7. Open Mail
8. Smile again!"

I also, had this issue. I do not have Gmail. I tried some of the other fixes posted here - but they did not work. The following is from the Apple Help folks and the second one (reset System Management Controller) finally fixed the issue.

1) Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac

Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart.

2)How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac

1Choose Apple menu > Shut Down and wait for your Mac to shut down.

2Press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds. If you have a MacBook Pro with Touch ID, the Touch ID button is also the power button.

3Release all keys.

4Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

The Shift Open Mail twice and then reboot and reopen mail fixed mine as well.

1. Close mail completely
2. Hold Shift and click on Mail
3. Close mail completely
4. Hold Shift and click on Mail
5. Close mail
6. Reboot
7. Open Mail
8. Smile again!

Min,

Not sure if you mean the update to v10.15.1 fixes the problem all by itself? i.e., Did Apple put something into the update to fix the problem outright?

I wasn't able to confirm if the update to v10.15.1 actually fixes the problem:

• I fixed one of my Macs before the update. After the update it still works.
• I started the fix on another Mac, but before the reboot part I ran the update to v10.15.1. After the update, I finished the fix and it works now, too.

So for sure... the update to v10.15.1 doesn't doesn't hurt things.

😀

Yeah, apple mail is completely broken in Catalina. I've waited for them to fix this, but no fix yet. I have the same problems:

1. Cannot search - ANYTHING! Nothing happens when type in the search box and press enter
2. Lost ALL flagged emails. Flagged email category does not even show up in the sidebar. This one is pretty annoying. I had so many flagged emails which I use regularly.

Tried rebuilding, the spotlight turning off-on thing using terminal, rebooting, safe mode, all kinds of stuff suggested here. Tried waiting for them to fix this. Alas, trying the final solution - Changing my mail client. I guess apple doesn't want to maintain a mail client anymore.

Saw this in the log:

And xattr fails miserably for me:

MacBook-Pro-2:Library xxxxx$ sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Users/xxxxx/Library/Mail

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/bin/xattr", line 13, in <module>

load_entry_point('xattr==0.6.4', 'console_scripts', 'xattr')()

File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/xattr/tool.py", line 258, in main

doSinglePathChange(filename,attr_name,attr_value,read,write,delete,recursive)

File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/xattr/tool.py", line 183, in doSinglePathChange

listdir = os.listdir(filename)

OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/Users/xxxxx/Library/Mail'

Same problem. Smart mailboxes are now dead in the water (as are searches) in Mail after the Catalina upgrade on my iMac. On my MacBook Pro after the Catalina upgrade searches and smart mailboxes are working just fine.