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None of the search works in Big Sur Mail.app

Hi,

To me Big Sur Mail.app is next to useless as none of the search, nor smart mailbox works at all.

I upgraded then immediately noticed that none of my smart mailbox worked, they displayed a correct (?) number of unread message, but clicking on them, just makes the number disappear, and show no message at all, like if it were empty.

Then I tried searches, I took the eMail address of a colleague and it returned 2 results, after a long "Searching…" message occurred.


I rebuilt my spotlight index, then deleted all envelope files, then rebuild the database. No dice.


I even deleted the whole /Library/Mail folder, and after all my iMap mails were downloaded, still same issue.


I'm using a Google Gsuite email imap account, and an iCloud one, same issue

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 6:38 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 9:48 AM

Same issue, search fails every time. No results for any search.


Searching by sender, subject, all terms fails to produce even one result. Had to go to web iCloud interface to find messages from this week.


Come on Apple. Where is the excellence?

89 replies

Nov 20, 2020 7:27 PM in response to Glitchtracker

Problem solved, apparently!


Found this old item about Catalina, tried it, and it worked!

https://www.techradar.com/how-to/macos-catalina-problems-how-to-fix-the-most-common-issues


macOS Catalina breaks search in Mail - here's how to fix it


There are reports that the search function no longer works in the Mail app after installing macOS Catalina.


The first thing to try, if you encounter this problem, is first close Mail completely. Then hold Shift and click on the Mail icon to open it in Safe Mode. Then, close Mail again, then hold Shift and open Mail again.


Finally, close Mail yet again, then reboot your Mac. Open Mail normally, and search should work again.


Feb 6, 2021 6:13 AM in response to HiRez

Happy for you, but the problem remains for a lot of us !


For the ones still affected, more info here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252035294?answerId=254556705022#254556705022


In short, it happens also on a 'like new' Mac with 11.2, with multiple users. When one user logs off, the other users will lose search capabilities in Mail. Incredible but true !

Dec 7, 2020 6:25 AM in response to Glitchtracker

So this fixed it for me (not sure exactly what did it but this is the order I did things).


  1. Rebuilt the mailboxes in Mail using the Mailboxes menu, then quit Mail when finished.
  2. Excluded my hard drive from Spotlight searches (System Preferences - Spotlight - Integrity).
  3. Restarted my computer.
  4. Removed the exclusion of my hard drive from the Spotlight settings.
  5. Let Spotlight fully reindex before starting Mail (you can check the status by opening the Spotlight search and typing anything).
  6. Launched Mail, and search was working.


Hope this helps.

Dec 10, 2020 4:33 PM in response to Glitchtracker

I, too, had to deal with the broken "search" function in Big Sur Apple Mail and it's kept me on my heels over the past few weeks. I ran into the issue on a couple different machines — 2018 i5 Mac Mini and M1 Mac Mini.


I have quite randomly gotten it to work again several times, but it was never clear, which of my actions actually fixed the problem and there's no way of predicting when "search" would stop working again in Apple Mail.


I have tried combinations of deleting envelope files and/or rebuilding spotlight indices. The last round seemed particularly stubborn to my attempts to get it to work again — but I just did, and here's exactly what I did:


  1. Quit Mail
  2. Go to ~/Library/Mail/V8/MailData and delete every file that contains "envelope" on that level. In my case there were 5 files but I have seen as few as only 3 files having "envelope" part of their file name over the past few weeks when fussing around with this issue. The 5 files I deleted were:
    1. Envelope Index
    2. Envelope Index-shm
    3. Envelope Index-wal
    4. Envelope Index..tmp.xLQXar-shm
    5. Envelope Index..tmp.xLQXar-wal
  3. Make sure to empty the trash when done
  4. Open System Preferences > Spotlight, go to Privacy, drag and drop the Mail folder (~/Library/Mail) in the "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations" list
  5. Quit System Preferences and restart your machine.
  6. After restarting, open Mail — you will be prompted that Mail will import your Mailboxes. I have 223k emails and it took about 5 minutes.
  7. After this is complete, open System Preferences > Privacy and remove the Mail folder from the list of items excluded from Spotlight search. This will trigger the spotlight index for the item to be rebuilt.
  8. Voila. It worked again and still does.


Hopefully 11.1 will take care of this issue.

Dec 15, 2020 5:38 PM in response to CoffeeBean

Two comments:

  1. I imagine this slipped through QC because it does not happen on all Macs all the time. I still have no idea what causes it. I have a MacBook Pro where this never happens and an iMac where it does.
  2. Does anyone know whether and how discussions like this even come to Apple’s attention? Is there anything a random user (e. g., me) can do to find out if Apple is aware of this discussion?

Jan 2, 2021 8:43 AM in response to Glitchtracker

Same problem here. Both the mail Search functionality and the "Smart Mailbox" feature is affected. Sometimes the search and/or Smart Mailboxes work after logging in and a quick logout/login helps.


Potential Solution


I noticed, that search results are found again (including Smart Mailboxes) if I rebuild the mailboxes. I cannot yet say how long this will stay ok, but so far it looks good.


  1. Select one or multiple mailboxes
  2. If you have many mailboxes arranged in folders, option click on the top-level to quickly expand the entire structure and then select as many as you like
  3. Use Menu "Mailbox" / "Rebuild"
  4. wait
  5. Should be ok immediately after mail is done, but quitting/reopening should not harm either.


Feb 13, 2021 2:41 AM in response to GanawaGangunawa

Thanks to GanawaGangunawa for the hint with corespotlightd.


I would prefer if Apple would actually fix this issue. Its affecting many users in every days activities.


Meanwhile using Stream Deck (or any other macro player) you can build a workaround. Make your tool execute "killall -9 corespotlightd" and you should be up and running again without a reboot.



Nov 20, 2020 5:18 AM in response to fellow

I erased all my mail, all the stuff that there's in library, so effectively restarting with a fresh new mail. As I'm in imap, it redownloaded everything, then I deleted the spotlight index and rebuilt it.


=> result : better but so slow that's unusable. Either the search are slow (not to actually search, but the trigering car take several seconds), ether it doesn't work at tall.


Same thing with smart mailbox, to get a result you have to clic and wait for a long time for it to trigger, and then you may get some results, not always.


Bottom line mail is totally broken

None of the search works in Big Sur Mail.app

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