Mail search not working after Big Sur install

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.

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.

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.

Suggestions online include rebuilding your mailbox or reinstalling Big Sur.

You may wish to try those, although I'd recommend backing up any important data beforehand.

I haven't needed to do either though, so can't guarantee they will work.

You may also wish to contact Apple support for advice.

It may also be possible to rebuild your email manually, but I'd need to direct you online for the exact process and any warnings.

I think that's a different issue, Cloudiii.

Is there not a magnifying glass icon at the top right of the menu bar?

If not, try going Edit > Find > Mailbox Search.

When I first opened Mail, I thought the search icon was missing, but it just didn't jump out to me.

Other posters seem to be reporting a different issue - searches result in no results following upgrade to macOS Big Sur.

Right-click on the menu bar and select "Customize toolbar...". You will either see that "Search" really is there or you can add it. I'm liking Big Sur a lot, except for what appears to be an attempt to make it look like Windows 8, with the unreadable, blah UI. I suppose I'll get used to it.

In my list of things to try, the first was rebuilding mailboxes. This has Mail re-download everything from the various mail servers you use. It won't necessarily get everything, especially "remote content" where the mail message has a link to another server to get, say, a picture or something. Back up anything you don't want to lose.

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.

Ah, I would have usually considered the possibility that the icon was hiding off the screen. It will depend on your resolution and hardware.

Another option - and I think it will work regardless of your display settings - is the keyboard shortcut:

Option + Command + F

On my MacBook Pro, this opens up the Search and the other icons move along to create space. However, I can still see all the icons. I suspect that you will be able to too. Let us know on here!

Dear All

Re: Mail search not working for Big Sur

I tried without success : re-installing Big Sur; closing /opening the mail; closing /starting the Mac

What it worked for me was reconfiguring the "customise touch bar" (i.e. opening the "customise touch bar" and adding the 'search function').

Thank you for all the advise and help

Best Regards

Xela

Do you have pop account?

My wife has pop account and had similar problem.

I set up a smart mailbox but with settings linked to pop account rather than on my mac. That has sorted the smart folder and deleted items are now displayed.

This is the first time when upgrading macOS that we've had any problems like this.

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.

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!