Mail search not working after Big Sur install

Reinstalling Big Sur was the only thing that fixed it for me. There are posts from as far back as OS X Lion with the same issue and advice on how to delete Mail "envelopes", rebuild spotlight indexes, rebuild mailboxes, and so on. I tried them all.

Reinstalling the OS isn't really a big deal. I've done it before to fix oddball issues. As I said above, it only took about 10 minutes. I believe it's called "installing in place" and it leaves your setup completely intact.

For me rebuilding the mailbox solved the problem. Select the mailbox you suspect the message is in, then go Mailbox - Rebuild. You can check the progress of rebuilding in the Activity Window (Window - Activity)

11.1 didn’t fix it for me for long. After a reboot the problem was back. I did try reinstalling the OS and that, too, fixed it for a reboot. What seems to have worked (so far) was re-indexing by turning off mail search in Spotlight settings and then turning it back in. It took hours to reindex (I checked the progress by typing anything into Spotlight). When it finished, mail search worked well and survived a reboot.

will report back if the problem comes back.

I started this posting thread on November 13th. Since then I have been involved with Apple Tech Help in over three hours of phone conversations and computer sharing, diagnostic scans and Terminal programs trying to get this problem resolved. Nothing they tried has worked and they seem to have given up with me. In the meantime I have found the quickest way to deal with it. As a reminder, my problem, and that of many of the others posting here, is when switching from one user account to another and then returning to the first user. That is when the search function in Apple Mail does not work anymore. What I have been doing now is logging out of the first user before switching to another user. Then when logging out of that second user I am given a choice of user accounts to log into. Choosing to log back into the first account gives me a functioning Mail search again. It is a small annoyance now and does not require a restart. Oh, and the new version of Big Sur 11.1 does not fix this.

I'm about 4-days into this solution and it seems to be holding (even through reboots). Following some of the other suggestions in this thread (most of which did not work), I restarted into Safe Mode, shut down and then did a regular reboot and the issue has fixed and has been holding. I am on a single user iMac.

__gabe__

User level:

Level 1

(9 points)

Nov 20, 2020 12:14 AM in response to DavidC-L

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 /

Also might try turning off Spotlight for Mail and Messages, although that hasn't helped me.

My problem was resolved after I rebooted my whole system in safe mode, which clears the system cache. Shut down the machine. Then power on while holding the shift button. Then try searching mail again. It should work. Then restart the machine to exit safe mode.

So I have been having the same problem, and finally, I hope, I have managed to resolve the issue.

I created a Big Sur Installation USB and reinstalled Big Sur by booting from the installation media. All my documents and files were safely backed up, just incase. And though the install took a while (about 45 min) - my search in email is now working normally. (touch wood it stays that way) - and could work for you too.

That's a lot of steps (unless it's a permanent fix).

I find the following alternative works, although it's a temporary workaround:

Either:

Log out and log back in (no need to close mail or other programs).

Or:

no need to log out or close programs. Just open Activity Monitor and quit the process 'corespotlightd'.

Then search works again.

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.

Do you force quit corespotlightd?

You may have to delete your search from the field and try again. Make sure all mailboxes are selected after re-entering the search term.

I've always found that force quitting that process works. It will respawn as you put it though. That's expected behaviour.

Yes, I realise that restarting will also kill that process. I just find it easier to force quit than restart.

You've already covered so many options that I would be wondering if it was a different underlying problem with your iMac.

I see you already deleted and reinstalled Mail accounts, but you might want to try a mail rebuild. That might take a while to run.

I did that at one point and seemed to work - although it was only a temporary solution. But it might be the missing link.

Other than that - and some possible glitch with your machine - I am a bit stumped.

The only other thing you might want to consider is creating another user on your iMac and setting up mail on that dummy account. Possibly create mail accounts separately to rule out a particular account being the issue. That might help see if there is something corrupt with your user account. Might be a remote possibility but probably worth a go?

Update ! and bad news !

I did a complete reset of my MacBook Air, erase the DD, dowloaded a fresh Big Sur and created two users (without using Time Machine).

So I have MacBook like new, not a single extra piece of software or driver or data, two empty users we will call A & B. My plan was to slowly add software and data and drivers until the moment I will see the bug appear, it would have given me an indication of what the problem could be. Things got faster than I expected ! 😤

I then setup an email account for user A, not an iCloud account but a simple map account. I give it time to download emails and use the search in Mail, it works as expected.

I go to user B, I don't even create an email account, I use fast switching to User A and Mail search still works as expected.

I fast switch back to user B, do nothing and simply log out of user B, remember this is what triggers the bug.

Log in user A, and bam, search is broken, exactly like it happens on my two Macs since Big Sur.

On an empty MacBook with only Big Sur installed, no other piece of software !

It means that he bug does not depend on anything else than Big Sur and Mail, not even iCloud, 100% reproducible and affecting every Mac with multiple users ? I cannot believe this went through QA in the first place and 3 months after the release of Big Sur it still exists ?

Apple, please, don't make Big Sur the Vista of Apple, I hate to realise I spent hours trying to understand why this bug happens thinking it is because of my configuration, only to find out it is a huge atrocious bug in Big Sur from the start.

So disappointed, and no answers to the multiple feedbacks I reported.

So sad...

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

Hi had the same problem. It looks like there is problem with spotlight.

Here is what worked for me:

• Open task monitor
• Search for spotlight processes
• Identify corespotlightd
• Stop process using x-icon
• Process will re-start and search should work now