I am unable to get mail search function to work after Big Sur install. After reading some other previous email search content, I closed mail completely, opened with shift+Mail, closed and rebooted and same problem occurring.
iMac, macOS 10.12
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.
Exactly but I can't just keep rolling the dice on combos of all these suggestions. Turning off mail in spotlight prefs seemed to work for me but again only momentarily. This thing is stubborn. the only thing I haven't tried is a full reinstall but again, the 11.1 should have been equivalent to that. Its really frustrating, I've been down loading third party search apps, trying other imap clients, etc but its such a waste of time. Had I known of this I would have sat tight on Catalina. Surprised we are not hearing more about it,. Could it be my hardware? (Macbook Pro Retina 13" - early 2015) .
I did a full OSX reinstall before installing 11.1. Which is what NevadaGreg suggested worked for him. So, I doubt that, by itself is the solution. Perhaps doing everything NevadaGreg did is the solution but only if it “stuck” for him.
waiting to see if he responds.
What sbennet5 said.. its getting old really quickly. Not being able to search mail is RIDICULOUS. so now I have to go to my iPhone or gmail web depending on account - search works perfectly there and apparently in Icloud web as well. Please Apple. We know mail has never been your favorite app to take care of, but this is ridiculous!
Thanks for the tip. Sadly this is not working for me.I've killed that process repeatedly and no change in Mail just returning no results on things I know are there in abundance. Apple PLEASE! Going into iCloud when I need to search mail and that is very clunky as you can only search one mailbox at a time and when you switch mailboxes you have to retype your search. This is a terrible fail of a most basically important service. Its 2021! LEt's get this fixed.
@moderators
Are user names not visible when clicking reply?
I can see 'date time in response to' then the full user name. Is that not visible to all users?
If so, I'm not sure on the difference between that and including a user name in a post?
Just curious and happy to abbreviate names in posts but if replying to 2 posts sometimes easier to include an @ mention.
Is that any different to seeing a full user name above the post?
After your discovery that killing corespotlightd and letting it restart itself, I would've thought that this would give Apple some useful information to be able to permanently fix this problem. I haven't yet seen any input from Apple in this discussion though.
Hi, J C. I can't claim any credit for that 'killing corespotlightd' discovery. I can't recall who posted that originally but it wasn't me!
I agree that it does seem like a simple thing to program as a workaround at least. Or, to point Apple in the right direction to permanently fix any underlying problem.
This does not seem to solve the issue for me.
When I go to view:Filters: enable, the only checkable options are :
Unread, Flagged, Addressed to me, CC'd to me, Only with attachment, Only from VIP.
Nothing about servers.
Checked them all - disabled filter, no search functionality
Unchecked them all, disabled filter, no search functionality.
what am I missing here? I am desperate to solve this problem!
thank you.
I'm selected on the right mailbox when I attempt a search. I've tried selecting different mailboxes, inboxes, and even the most simple search returns ZERO. I can search any string that should exist but nothing appears. I've tried the SHIFT process but it didn't help.
Has there been any acknowledgement from Apple that this is a bug? Waiting for the a fix in the next update to Big Sur might be like waiting for a bus that never arrives if we don't know it's been acknowledged as a bug and is being worked on.
Last month I spent several hours on the phone, sharing my computer during three or four sessions with three different Apple tech support staff. They tried a bunch of things, none of which worked. I haven’t heard anything from them in weeks. I presume they shared this up the chain. The last guy said he was sharing with engineers.
This is the problem with workarounds posted based on what appears to be experimentation.
I've tried various 'fixes' suggested by users. However none seem to be permanent solutions.
Clearly, there are other factors in play.
I cannot say I've tried every option that people posted. But so far, none seem to stick.
They might work initially. But after a while, the problems recur.
What do these 3 commands do? I would be very reluctant to consider this action without understanding exactly what these commands are.
If it indexes everything in Mac, how will it index new items. Will it not need to be repeated at a later date?
What if people recover data from a backup? Will that data also still be indexed?
Problem is on iMac. MacBook is just fine.
List of things tried that did not work:
Long time without a solution. The 2 Macbook pro I use at work are affected. Use several users. This is a real productivity issue, too many months. What's going on with OSX, every update bring new issues.
Mail search not working after Big Sur install
