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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
Finally fixed this. Turns out it's a Spotlight glitch. First- Apple recommends you call them. (800) 275-2273 They give free advice on software even if you are out of warranty. Because if you don't know what you are doing you could mess up your computer. Ask them to bump you up to a specialist- the front line help doesn't know how to fix it.
Here are the steps:
Quit Mail
In finder, hold Option key and click the Go menu at the very top left of your screen
Select Library
Select Metadata
Select CoreSpotlight folder
Select all the items in CoreSpotlight Folder and right click to make a new folder with selected items and put new folder with the all the items in CoreSpotlight Folder.
Restart computer. It may take 24 hours to re-index mail but this is the answer! I had to repeat it about 2 weeks after the fix. But it works again. Apple has its engineers working on a permanent fix.
Again- you can seriously mess up your drive if you are a newbie. Call Apple to take you through it. You may not have the exact same problem as me.
I tried the Quit Shift Open, Quit Shift Open Restart thing .... didn't work for me.
Tried removing search window from toolbar..... didn't work for me.
Didn't reinstall OS BUT DID run OS upgrade to 11.61 from 11.4 AND ... IT WORKED!
Now search working in Mac Mail.
Happy Days!
Got on telephone with Apple Support. We found that under Mailboxes All Accounts we Offline ?? Changed to All Accounts On Line and I have been getting all my mail since. I think when my update was installed it turned my Accounts off??
NEW Data Point?
I had experienced the problem first shortly after upgrading to Big Sur. Then - thank Heaven - all my searches just began working consistently and continued working until today.
Today - NOTE: I've since upgraded to Monterey v12.0.1 (21A559) and many months have passed since Big Sur and the Monterey update - I experienced the most disruptive behaviour when searching in MAIL: it would find only those messages that had been sent to me today. All the historical messages were in my INBOXes but they wouldn't be found regardless if I selected ALL INBOXES or ALL MAILBOXES (well, mostly my EXCHANGE and iCloud messages were missed. Other messaging service INBOXes worked a bit.).
I tried various workarounds including restarts without success.
Later this afternoon I noticed that I had 10 pending application updates. So, since mail was being frustrating and I was tiring of manually searching my INBOXes, I did the application updates and, because it's a habit of mine, I then did a complete restart of my macOS machine.
When it came back up MAIL searches were working.... ALL Mail searches were now finding anything I wanted as it had done before the problem expressed itself today.
I find it difficult to believe that pending application updates would break MAIL Search but...... well, I thought I'd mention it.
Mail search does not work for me in 11.6.2.
I am a single user. There are no other users on my computer.
I have tried all the suggested solutions--shift/open Mail; rebuild mailboxes; sync mailboxes; drag new search bar; make sure correct boxes are checked in System Pref Spotlight, etc..
Nothing works.
I can't force quit corespotlightd because that process does not show up in Activity Monitor "All Processes."
Search simply does not work. Zero results.
I see the same issue. All other folders work fine with TM just not mail. Cannot go back in time to retrieve older emails. I noticed a similar issue using Catalina but Big Sur is worse.
A rebuild of the mailbox helped instantly here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mail/mlhlp1227/mac
Perhaps one fo the best ways to give feedback to Apple is at:
https://www.apple.com/contact/feedback/
For those who are experiencing this issue please consider providing feedback as a bug at Apple’s Feedback site for Mail here:
Well said.
Have you given that feedback at: https://www.apple.com/feedback/ ?
There you can make these points about just MAIL or the macOS overall.
This comment https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252035294?answerId=255479196022#255479196022 later in this post has the answer to try first. This fixed our issue after try a few others.
These steps worked for me.
these steps helps to me:
Two accounts presently enabled.
Have you tried clicking on the "All mailboxes under search at the top of the left side menu screen that pops up during a search?
This works for me and was not perfect but works fine for now!
Ooops, spoke too soon. The app, "Copied" still has that issue.
Mail search not working after Big Sur install
