Mail search not working after Big Sur install

Perhaps.

However, Apple has set up information and discussion forums for developers (developer.apple.com), for users (discussions.apple.com), and others as well as providing a way of submitting bug reports (https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html), At the moment, the latter is where Apple is looking for bug reports (and feature suggestions, by the way). So, if a bug report is left here, don't be surprised if "Apple" doesn't see it.

Good point.

Let it be known that I'm not advocating that Apple can make no mistakes.

Just wanted to make note that Apple is looking for reports of macOS bugs at https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

Hi, Keren240.

Please report this problem at https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html. and select "Bug Report" for the feedback type. You could even just copy and paste your post here since it concisely describes the problem you're having.

This area is a user discussion forum rarely checked by Apple a it's for 'users helping users".

The more people reporting this bug at the above link the louder the problem will sound directly with Apple..

Thanks.

I'm glad, too.

Not exactly sure what I did to make it work except that refrain from logging out completely.... I have multiple users but consistently use "Login Window...." rather than actually logging out a user through "Fast User Switching":

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlp2439/mac

Occasionally I restart my MacBook but restarting is one of the (more time consuming) ways to get Mail Search working.

Well, it does kill the process but "corespotlightd" is automatically restarted again by the operating system. That's what's supposed to happen. "corespotlightd" won't disappear forever because of this auto-restart. [NOTE: when you first go looking, you may have more than one "corespotlightd" process running. Check the PID column and make sure you kill both of them and don't end up killing the same process twice - or how ever many you have running.]

...but that's the intended behaviour: killing the process and letting it auto-restart can - for some people - restore the search capabilities. YMMV, sorry.

As you see, this process is quick so, if it works for you but SEARCH begins failing again,, just repeat.

FYI:

"corespotlightd": https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-is-process-corespotlightd.2187256/

In any case, since Apple doesn't track this particular discussion thread, may I suggest that you also report this problem (and your frustration) at https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html [select Bug Report from the Feedback Type popup] This is where Apple expects to get Bug Reports...... if you haven't already done so

Thanks.

Wayne

I followed this article https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716 to rebuild my Spotlight Search. In the privacy tab i added my whole hard drive then quit System Preferences then went back in a removed my hard disk from the privacy tab and voila! it worked.

Things I tried before reinstalling that didn't work, but might work for you:

1. Running "Rebuild" from Mail's "Mailbox" menu
2. Restart in safe mode to force rebuild of caches
3. Rebuild Mail's indexes by

a. Quitting Mail

b. deleting the three files that start with "Envelope index" in ~/Library/Mail/V8/MailData

c. Restarting Mail and allowing import of mail

and 3. Rebuild Spotlight's indexes. You can do this several different ways, but the easiest for this issue would be going to System Preferences, selecting "Spotlight", unchecking "Mail and Messages", wait a while then recheck "Mail and Messages".

None of these resulted in any issues for me, but if you have room it might be a good idea to back up everything beforehand.

I'm also tried to reindex the "Macintosh HD".

• open the Terminal

sudo mdutil -i off -E /
# disable the indexing
sudo mdutil -s /
# status check: /:	Indexing disabled.

• restart the Mac

sudo mdutil -i on /
# enable the indexing
sudo mdutil -s /
# status check: /:	Indexing enabled.

You could check the progress by trying to search somthing in Spotlight.

I've had the same problem for some time, and the Shift-Mail steps only helped for a short time. But I just discovered that fiddling with the Filter settings seems to have helped, even when filters are turned off. Here's what I did:

1. Turn on View:Filter:Enable Message Filter
2. Select all the servers from View:Filter:Include Mail From. Previously, no servers were selected
3. Turn off everything else (this step may not be necessary)
4. Turn off View:Filter:Enable Message Filter if filtering is not desired.

After selecting servers and turning off message filtering, the Mail search window now works normally.

Good luck.

1. sudo mdutil -i off /
2. sudo mdutil -E /
3. sudo mdutil -i on

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:

• reinstall Big Sur
• log out of mail accounts and log back in
• Delete mail accounts and reinstall
• Reindex search
• Synchronize mail
• Delete search/spotlight plist files
• Delete mail plist files
• Read these forums and many others
• Rinse, lather, repeat

• killing the process corespotlightd in activity monitor fixes the problem every time, the search will work again. No need to unlog or reboot, this is great !
• let's say you have two users or more, if you log in more than one user and stay logged the search will work for both users. The problem appears when you unlog from one user, then the search for the other user will stop working.
• confirmed it with a brand new user just added for testing, and it happens also... perfectly reproducible
• this is what I see on my iMac, with 11.2, your mileage may vary and I am curious if more users confirm this behaviour

Could be that we are a small number of users affected by this issue, so Apple doesn't care. Maybe the bug is not in Mail or Big Sur but because of interaction with something else we have on our Macs. If it was happening on just 10% of even 1% of Macs Cuppertino would have burned by now, so we must have a particular configuration or application creating the problem.

Lets try to find out what we have in common that could brings this, do you guys use something uncommon like:

• Office 2016 ? yes, it's old and I don't trust M$
• BackBlaze online backup
• Xojo
• Ka-Block
• Canon printer-scanner and drivers

Could be something totally different, but curious about your configuration JC Laughton as you see the exact same behaviour ss me...

List of things tried that did not work:

• Reinstall Big Sur
• Log out of mail accounts and log back in
• Delete mail accounts and reinstall
• Reindex search
• Synchronize mail
• Delete search/spotlight plist files
• Delete mail plist files
• Read these forums and many others
• Changing the privacy settings as people have mentioned
• Making sure Spotlight settings (> Preferences > Spotlight)
• Rinse, lather, repeat

Nothing works.

This problems is ONLY on my iMac. My MacBook, with identical settings and identical accounts on it have no problem with search.

I have noticed that from time to time, at random, it works. But it only works for a single search. If you try to search again ... it just tries and tries and nothing happens.

The broken is on the Apple side.

I may have found at least one cause based on the timing of the issue and what I did:

1. I was having no problems searching my Inbox.
2. I installed a new "test user" which was a Standard user. I did not set it up with Apple ID.
3. I restarted the computer, used the Test User, then used fast user switching to log out of the test user and then into my Main User Account (Admin)
4. After starting Mail I could see all of my mail, but no searching did not work (no results). I also tried Houdah Spot to search Mail and that didn't work either (previously I did get results). Also Spotlight did not return email results.
5. Restarting did not fix the issue at this point
6. Because I had just set up the new user I wondered if this was the problem. So I deleted the user and all its home folder.
7. I then restarted into my Main account and now Mail searching works again.
8. THERE MAY BE SOMETHING ABOUT HAVING ANOTHER STANDARD ACCOUNT OR ANY OTHER ACCOUNT AND USING FAST USER SWITCHING THAT IS MESSING UP SEARCHING.
9. Of course, this would be a bug, but then I am horrified at how buggy Big Sur (11.2) is. I wish I had never installed it