Mail search not working after Big Sur install

To Richard-IOW, I don't see the problem you describe. When search works it finds the emails in 'on My Mac' or anywhere in the Mail program.

Did you try to delete the envelop files in the Mail folder in Library ? or re-construct the Spotlight index ?

Maybe someone who really knows the mail app can tell us how mail search is supposed to work.

If I have a mail box labeled "Overall" and 5 sub mailboxes to that labeled, "one", "two", "three", "four", and "five" and I search "Overall" does the search include the sub-mailboxes (one, two, three, four, five) and give you results from all of them or just "Overall" and only at that level of "Overall." This means you would have to go directly to "One" or "Three" etc., to search them for content.

That is how my mail searches now. I cannot get search results for a whole mailbox and its sub mailboxes but only for one mailbox at a time. I can search All Mailboxes though. And Inbox too. I could have sworn back a while ago you could get search results for a mailbox and all it sub-mailboxes at once.

Is this how it is now? You can't only search one specific mailbox at a time?

Thank you whoever knows the answer.

This is Crazy. It's as if everybody is making excuses for Apple now when they should have addressed this huge problem long ago. I've been using Apple Mail for at least 10 years (probably longer). Search always worked perfectly and globally in mail. You didn't have to specify a mailbox, just type a string and anything remotely matching would come up. If you wanted to search only in a specific or limited space you could, but it was never necessary to specify and it worked through every piece of mail ever touched. Since Big Sur it immediately broke for me. I have tried everything on this thread and more. Killing spotlight processes does not work. I am a single user only setup. Have done ALL trouble shooting anyone on this thread has suggested. None of it improves the situation. Being unable to function without functional mail search I finally ended up biting the bullet and going through the pain of checking out practically ALL other apps for mac mail. I am not naming the app because this is not a plug-post. The app I ended up with took a lot of time to adjust to and was very different than apple mail (way more powerful and more functionality) so I had a tough adjustment curve, but now about six weeks in I am not looking back. Searches execute quickly and flawlessly (with more granular control than Mail App) and everything is working great. I am still following this thread because I am a longtime Apple user and shareholder and I am worried about what's going on here. The is unacceptable. There are people in this thread who spent hours on the phone with Apple tech and they were not able to resolve anything. We are all gritting our teeth and pulling our hair out and killing spotlight and rebooting and logging in and out and deleting envelope indexes and, you name it! The user base is clearly suffering, and working their butts off trying to resolve, Big Sur has had two updates, and not a peep from Apple about resolution. Maybe it's specific to certain machine builds? (for the record I am on a 13" MacBook Pro Retina early 2015 with 16 GB ram) but it seems to be all over the place. I wish you all an end to this madness, but (talking about mail app only, not Apple as a company) when the ship is sinking, at some point you have to get off. I am glad I was able to find a lifeboat (a luxury yacht would be a more apt metaphor) to save me and allow my workflow to continue which largely depends on being able to search and find filed emails. I just hope this poor attention to important details doesn't seep through to the OS entirely. So far all other Big Sur issues I've seen are resolving or can be easily worked around. For any of you on here who have stated "I did XYZ and it is now fixed," can you please elaborate and tell us if the fix is sticking, or has to be brought back with repeated performance of "XYZ"? Good Luck to all and.... FIX IT Apple! ( I know they don't read in here, its been formally reported enough times now that they should be in here trying to learn something, i.e. "we broke it pretty badly!"

To JLewisH, here is how the search works for me (when it is not broken): if i click on "All Mailboxes" and type in the search box, Mail will search everywhere and find results wherever they are in any sub mailbox or even in the mail stored in 'on my Mac'.

If I then click on a mailbox, what is in the search field will be searched (and found !) only in that particular mailbox and it's sub mailboxes.

This is how it worked for years and what happens for me now on my two Macs.

It looks like you have something else wrong in your system, time for a clean install...😫

I haven't knowingly deleted anything. I did try the procedure shown at the top, deleting something and waiting 24 hours etc. , which did nothing for me. And, I am not a multi-user. I do not switch users.

I do not have anywhere to search apart from "All inboxes". I do not have "on My Mac", other than a header. Hence creating the equivalent "All mail" sorted my problem.

Search now only searches the mailbox, smart or otherwise, that you select. AFAIR, it never used to matter! So, unless you create a smart mailbox to cover mail in all mailboxes, you cannot search "anywhere".

And VIPs are still broken, to me more important than any search.

Then something is really wrong, but it must be happening to you only unfortunately.

You could create another user just for testing, launch Mail in that user space and make two or three accounts to see if Mail behaves differently. If it is the case you know the problem is not unsolvable... and it is easy to delete the test user afterwards.

Thank you Ganawa. That’s how my search used to work before recent updates. it included all sub mail boxes too but no longer does. I’ll look up how to do a clean reinstall. Scary though. The more I update the worse things get in search mailboxes. Thank you again.

I should add that in Big Sur, searching VIP mailboxes no longer works for me. If I create a "shadow" version of the VIP mailbox by using a Smart Mailbox, then that works. I don't know why, because in earlier versions of the OS, searching these same VIP mailboxes always worked. Any insights? Not sure if it relates the problem Richard-IOW is describing but it might.

To Gregg Radell: (just in case the forum replies don't work either...) Your post struck me as being the one most to the point. I'm glad you found an alternative solution for Mail but I sill wish Apple could at least fix the things that used to work in the past. I've been using IOS for the last 15 years or so and I realize that apart from a few gimmicks that probably most of us don't even have much use for, (such as the so called 'improvements' to Photos - or is it Photo? can't keep track any longer...) the core functions, the robustness of the system has all been downhill, in stark contrast to the global marketing ramp-up. I know it may sound extremely naive to expect otherwise but, on the other hand, it's only going to get worse if we, users and consumers just stay silent. Like I've said before, the differences to Microsoft and its infamous Windows (apart perhaps for XP) are all but gone.

Anyways, thanks for you input mate!

I fully agree with you. I too have been using Mail for at least 15 years (or 20). I find the original design and functionality really great - but problems over recent years with bugs and lack of reliability have been very disappointing. The big Bug in Big Sur is not a new issue - there is evidence of lack of testing over the past number of years as new updates to the OS were rolled out. Do they wish we (Mail users) would go away? I would like if Apple would demonstrate some of that old reliability that their reputation was built on.

We all agree, it is a disaster and so unprofessional from Apple. We report and discuss the problem here, report on feedback, and we don't even have a clue on what happens in the Apple Ivory Round Tower: do they know ? do they care ? are we such a small subset of users that it is not worth their precious time working on idiotic useless 'features' instead of fixing bugs they introduced in a software udpate ?

This is where Twitter could be useful: could we reach Mr Cook directly ? we have to elevate the issue, after three months of patience we deserve some sort of attention...

Me too! I'm having this problem. I can search some emails, randomly will select different years on the topic I search on mail. I used to do a search by price number; since I work in finances and I am not able anymore... I need this fixed!!!!

Do you have other user accounts on your device?

Does that fix the problem permanently? Even if other users log in?

Most people seem to have problems when another user logs in. This causes the bug to reappear.

I found this on another site and it worked for me.

1. Save your work and close all of your apps

2. Close Mail app

3. Hold the Shift key and open the Mail app

4. Close the Mail app (don't search or perform any other actions)

5. Hold the Shift key and open the Mail app (repeat of Step 3)

6. Close the Mail app (repeat of Step 4)

7. Restart your Mac

8. Open Mail app like you normally would

9. Try searching your mail

Hopefully it's a permanent fix. 🙏🏼 🤞🏼

That was my problem, it would only search the inboxes and most of my mail has been removed from there.

Try this: create a smart mailbox with rules "Not in mailbox" "All unread" and select that before you search.

It works for me.