Mail search not working after Big Sur install

Im a single user with one account and the NVRAM fix I posted last week or so is still working - however if I sign out of iCloud and sign back in problem of not searching in mail reappears so I had to redo the NVRAM - that worked ok again so I guess I don't ever sign out of iCloud

The issue that I am experiencing is with searching for mail particularly with exchange mail accounts.

Is there any fixes yet and also moving messages hangs as well. Only way so far is to rebuild the mailbox.

thanks

Honestly, I haven't tried killing the corespotlightd process yet; restarting the system seems to at least make it go away for awhile., and that's what I did most recently. But next time I see that it's become a problem again, I'm definitely going to try to force kill that process!

It appears that the gmail search is looking for dumpsboss rather than dumpboss. And retrieving results under the former.

So, try Apple Mail search under dumpsboss and see if you see a different outcome.

If you don't, go to Activity Monitor and force quit 'corespotlightd' process.

Clear the Mail search field and retry - any difference?

Thanks for the reply, but have a look closer, the text typed in Gmail is the same "Dumpboss" without the "s" and because it's A.I. powered it figured out I misspelled the word and offered results for "Dumpsboss". I interacted with this company in December and wouldn't remember the exact name, I only remembered what I thought was the title.

I have similar issues when looking for older emails with documents etc. Apple search seems to only take exact matches...

I got that. I was trying to help you figure out if Mail is not working - or whether you see no results because of the (lack of) AI.

Apple Mail is exact match. But it allows partial search - so for example 'Dump' should find any emails containing that sequence.

Search appears to be working to design. Therefore, your issue seems to be different to that posted by others.

You could suggest added features to Apple. Or use an alternative solution.

It makes me cry - with annoyance as well as not being about to use the programme.

I hate to think I will need to move to Outlook .... but at the moment, I cannot manage without Outlook.

When I search, I can find old messages - but not my most recent message. It is infuriating!

I use a MacBook Pro 15in, 2017

Update 11.2.3 is available !

Don't get too excited though, it does not solve the problem for me, the bug is still happening. Force killing 'corespotlightd' still fixes it.

Looks like no one cares about this at Apple, this problem is more than 3 months old, 100% reproducible and no communication, no solution, no consideration for customers. Sad.

Could someone list the simple steps for “dummies” like me for force quitting corespotlightd. I don’t even know what that is or where to find it to force quit it. Would be really appreciated. Thanks.

Thank you so so much. I had no idea. Are there any unintended consequences from doing the above steps like loss of other data or settings? Or is one free to do it as often as needed? As a note I have reported the problem to Apple both online and through Apple Care. Again thank you for the excellent instructions.

Apple should be monitoring ALL user discussions. That's the only way they can find out how their software is performing in the real world, and ultimately improve it. They have more than enough people in the giant doughnut, and more than enough cash in the bank, to do that.

Well, that is definitely more bad than good news...But thanks for sharing and for your hard work mate. Now I know for sure it was a bad decision to keep updating my Imac with all the trash Apple's putting-out nowadays. It feels more and more like the Microsoft we all used to despise.

I can add that for my machine, I am the only user and my mac is set up with only One user account.

I do not know what triggered the bug. I also had it in the past - in early Catalina (as I recall) and one of the updates fixed it.

I have a second MacBook Pro that I did not upgrade and I have no problem with the search in Mail on that.

Since deleting the process 'corespotlightd' as GanawaGangunawa advises I no longer have the problem - and I hope it stays that way.

I will watch for it reappearing and see if I can note any odd incident that might have triggered it.

I found out something today, I am not sure if this changed with Big Sur but I strongly suspect it may have something to do with it.

Problem:

When you search, it only now seems to search whatever mailbox is selected in the left hand panel. This is usually "All inboxes". This seems to ONLY search mail in the inboxes (as it says!). I have several accounts and I have been searching in "All inboxes" for ever and it always used to (before Big Sur) find mail wherever it was. Whether it searches folders in imap accounts, I haven't proved yet. However, it does not seem to search mailboxes "On My Mac" - mail downloaded, via imap or pop, and then moved from the inbox, by rules or manually, to a mailbox on the hard drive. This, of course, is where most of my saved emails reside so they are never found!

Solution:

Luckily, smart mailboxes seem to ignore location unless specified. We need to refer to the predefined smart mailbox All unread which uses the rule "message is unread". (There is no rule for "message is read"!)

I created a smart mailbox called All mailboxes using rule "not in mailbox All Unread" which correctly selected all read messages, from anywhere! Thousands of emails appeared! When this mailbox is selected my searches work fine! You may have to wait several minutes each time you select All mailboxes for the Mail program to refresh the total at the top. Mine took about two minutes to find 29k!

VIPs

VIPs are the same but cannot be fixed by humble users as far as I can see. Apple, you need to fix this!! Mail will only show a VIP's mail if it is in an inbox and has not been moved to another mailbox!! This is not how it used to work and it is now useless.

Thanks for the input Wayne but I still feel disappointed at the direction Apple seems to be headed with their software updates. in addition to the problems with Mail - that ultimately brought us here - I personally experience a whole host of quirks with Big Sur, and that can be anything from the way Safari performs weirdly sometimes, to the way spotlight behaves, etc...I'm no developer so I really can't say, I can only relay my own experience, which makes me miss more & more, everyday, the previous and apparently more robust versions of old IOS' such as Mountain Lion or Mavericks. Useless innovation, at any cost and for cosmetic & business appeal's sake used to be Microsoft's speciality but I guess I'm just being nostalgic here...:)