Mail search not working after Big Sur install

It's not fast user switching, or slow user switching as the problem does not happen when you switch users.

It happens when one user logs out then you lose search capabilities for every other user. At this point your only choice is to reboot or force kill the 'corespotlightd' process.

Your link is interesting as it shows that Spotlight is really broken and software is to tested seriously. Sad.

Aha! Perfect, yes it's easy to reproduce knowing the logout is the trigger. On my wife's machine with two non-admin users when one logs out the other loses mail search. The AppleScript I created on Emily's Dock (do shell script "killall -9 corespotlightd") fixes the bug quickly. So now it's just a minor annoyance for her until Apple fixes it.

Thank you so much for ALL you have done to identify this bug and share the fix. I summarized the problem with credit to you on my obscure personal tech blog: https://tech.kateva.org/2021/02/big-sur-bug-mail-search-corespotlightd.html

Ha!! Reinstalling Big Sur worked. I wish I had done that to begin with. I had run "rebuild mailboxes" which gets everything the imap servers have on them, but not any linked information that has been removed.

The re-install took a very short time compared to the original install, maybe 10 minutes. I had saved a copy of the installer since it took 10 hours or something to get it downloaded. If you don't have a copy, I think you can re-install from Recovery.

Another app (called "Copied") appears to be OK now. One of its windows would show up surrounded by a purple box with MacOS saying the developer needed to fix it. Apparently that was erroneous as it's fine now.

I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but I think a library didn't get installed properly on the initial install. Sure hopes this helps somebody.

I had a similar problem with Mail Search after installing Big Sur.

I was able to resolve by just closing Mail normally, logging off and restarting my MacBook Pro.

Mail Search is now working again :)

If you are still having problems, it might be worth opening in Safe Mode and seeing if that helps.

logging out completely and restarting was enough to restore full functionality to SEARCH.

As for the search box being missing, I initially thought this was the case, too, but since "Move To...." has been added to the tool bar, the search box was "hidden" off to the right of the window I had open. However, there was a chevron (two arrowheads) pointing to the right at the end of the tool bar indicating that more was missing. I got back to search by clicking on the chevron. T/he other thing to do is ro stretch the window larger making more room in the tool bar...or edit the toolbar removing something.

I am able to search individual folders and such just fine. However, the ability to search all folders/mailboxes seems to have disappeared. Can't find anything in any of the menus. This is really frustrating.

I've had mixed results with search in Apple Mail since upgrading to Big Sur.

At first I was getting no search results. After a restart, search was working as expected.

However, search gave no results again yesterday. It would find people but say no results, regardless of search terms.

A reboot fixed this though, and now it's working (or appears to be working) across all mailboxes and folders.

So, maybe try a restart as a starting point.

I appreciate the suggestion. My computer's been restarted several times since completing the upgrade (everything else about Big Sur appears to function as expected), to no avail. In the previous version of macOS, when I typed something in the search bar, I'd be presented with the option in the results to search just a single folder or all folders. That option seems to have disappeared and now it seems the search only works on the folder which has been selected. See the attached screenshot. Clicking the '+' sign only facilitates creating a smart folder from the search term(s). The filter button only lets me filter that particular folder by the search term(s). No option to search across all folders that I can discern, which is extremely frustrating!

Well, I'm not sure if it's the "official" way to do this, but I found out that you can use Shift+Click and/or Command+Click to select multiple folders to include in your search. If I click on my inbox, then hold down Shift and click on the very last folder in my email account, it selects all of the folders in-between, as one might expect, and then all of the selected folders are included in the search. This is dumb, but at least it works. Finally found the email I was looking for, too!

I thought the search was defaulting to all folders/mailboxes. But when I checked just now, it isn't. It was highlighted to all inboxes, so that's what the search did - not surprisingly!

As soon as I start typing the search though, I get an 'all mailboxes' link appearing at the top of the left hand pane - as below:

This then provides results for all mailboxes and all folders - so includes inbox, sent items, drafts across all mailboxes - essentially all Mail folders as the name implies!

If you're not seeing the 'all mailboxes' option, then start typing in the search field first, then the option should appear...

Edit - looks like the multiple folders select option does work exactly as you said (to choose contiguous or non-contiguous folders). Mail will confirm at the top of the page how many folders are selected, as you may have found.

In a strange turn of events, I tried what __gabe__ mentioned above and it worked. Now, when I start typing in the search box, Mail searches all mailboxes/folders. However, now I can't search a specific mailbox/folder, not even if I click on a folder before starting the search. Apple, fix your junk before releasing it!!

I read various replies. Decided to modify the items in the Mail header (sorry my langage is not correct) and moved the search button to a visible place. And hey presto - the search button is now working.

Thanks for the tip - Selecting all the folders in my mail box with a shift click, i was able to instantly find the emails i was searching for. If I don't do the shift click, I get zero results. So this works, but this behaviour is really inconvenient. And its different from pervious mail versions.

used to be able to click the master "inbox" folder only which would search all subfolders... 😢

Just discovered this for myself, and my search problems are solved. Hope this helps others. No idea if this is new in Big Sur, but Ive never needed to do this before to search mail.

At the top of the list of mailboxes, Mail now has a "folder" under a category called "Search". I need to select that folder called "All Mailboxes" before searching to get any search results.

If I select the "All Inboxes" folder further below, or any other inbox folder, i get zero search results.

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.