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.
I called Apple Support and the technician I spoke with did not seem to have ever heard of this bug. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes. Then she suggested I reinstall Big Sur. I did that. But the same problem exists. After switching users and then returning to my main user account I need to restart the computer to get the Mail Search function working again. Very inconvenient to say the least. I will report this failure directly to the Apple Support team now that I have a Case Number. I would advise anyone else with this problem to report it through the Apple Support service.
I hadn't tried. But just did since Mail search stopped working again. Unfortunately, that didn't work for me.
That said, I didn't;t get that security and privacy window you mentioned.
When you say - but after that, then restarting - do you mean restarting your device?
If so, that's my main fix for this. I find simply restarting my MacBook Pro fixes this - for a while at least!
I'm yet to find a permanent solution. A restart (of MacBook) can help. And, a mailbox rebuild seems to work for a while.
As another commenter mentioned, it does seem to be affected by other people logging on (if you have multiple laptop users).
Apple reckon there is no bug - but I and others would seem to disagree!
I do not wish to be negative, but many of us have tried your approach, only to find that some time later Big Sur reverts to the mail search function and Smart Maiboxes misbehaving again.
Please let this discussion know if your solution continues to work over the next few days.
(Do you have several user accounts on your MAC and do you swap accounts regularly ? Do you use the Smart Mailbox features of Mail)
thanks
S.
An added tip: Since this problem only occurs when switching from one user to another and then back, a simple extra step is this: Before switching users, log out of your current user account. Then log in to the next user account. When switching back to the first account by logging in you will find Mail Search works.
The new Big Sur OS 11.1 Update that just came out (Dec 14, 2020) has fixed the problem for me. Here are the release notes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-big-sur-11_1-release-notes Interesting enough, there is no mention of it fixing anything affecting mail or search. Sometimes I wonder if Apple fixes problems that they don't want to report. But in any event, there you go!
I was about to say it didn't work ...
... but before posting that decided to read some of the other replies. As i was reading those, I notice the Mail window update, and now it's showing the search results.
That first time, it took probably 30 seconds or so to update; however, that can seem like an eternity in macOS world. Maybe it was longer? It's no performing just as fast as it ever did.
Has anybody tried this:
1 Log in as primary user. Test mail search works.
2 Additionally log in as secondary user. Test mail search works.
3 Log out as secondary user. Check that mail search is broken for primary user.
4 Log back in as secondary user. Is mail search working for secondary user? Is mail search still broken for primary user?
Does this provide any additional useful information?
Same thing. There is no longer a sarch box. Where there was one, it now says move to...
Restart did the trick for me.
A rebuild of the mailbox helped instantly here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mail/mlhlp1227/mac
I was having the same issue with mail and not being able to search after installing Big Sur. So I quit mail, restarted the computer, re-opened mail and the search began to work. Hope this helps!
I have same problem. Mail Search not providing results, and the same with Smart Mailboxes .
This is very annoying !! I have 37,000 emails, and three mailboxes.
That sounds like it could be the official way.
However, if I don't select any folders, I find that search applies to all folders. I haven't had a play with this today, at work now on Windows machine!
Unfortunately, I don't have that Search category or folder in my Mail app :-(
Mail search not working after Big Sur install
