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 should add that in Big Sur, searching VIP mailboxes no longer works for me. If I create a "shadow" version of the VIP mailbox by using a Smart Mailbox, then that works. I don't know why, because in earlier versions of the OS, searching these same VIP mailboxes always worked. Any insights? Not sure if it relates the problem Richard-IOW is describing but it might.
This link explains how to make a AppleScript to automate restarting corespotlightd. Problem seems to be related to fast user switching (at least that's how the problem crops up for me!)
https://tech.kateva.org/2021/02/big-sur-bug-mail-search-corespotlightd.html
I had this problem, with Mail 14, Big Sur 11.5.2. I don't know if I've 'solved' it but it has gone away as a result of one time-consuming but useful step - moving thousands of emails from my main inbox to other mailboxes I've set up. Now that I've done it I can't remember how many emails were in the inbox to begin with but it was certainly more than 9,000 and maybe more than 10,000. Could it be that there's some kind of limit to the number of searchable emails in an inbox, or in any one mailbox? And that one over-full box blocks the others? Sounds unlikely, I know, but as I say, it's working for now. And there were way too many emails in there. It's good to sort them out, deleting the chaff, separating the personal from the business-related, etc.
NEW Data Point?
I had experienced the problem first shortly after upgrading to Big Sur. Then - thank Heaven - all my searches just began working consistently and continued working until today.
Today - NOTE: I've since upgraded to Monterey v12.0.1 (21A559) and many months have passed since Big Sur and the Monterey update - I experienced the most disruptive behaviour when searching in MAIL: it would find only those messages that had been sent to me today. All the historical messages were in my INBOXes but they wouldn't be found regardless if I selected ALL INBOXES or ALL MAILBOXES (well, mostly my EXCHANGE and iCloud messages were missed. Other messaging service INBOXes worked a bit.).
I tried various workarounds including restarts without success.
Later this afternoon I noticed that I had 10 pending application updates. So, since mail was being frustrating and I was tiring of manually searching my INBOXes, I did the application updates and, because it's a habit of mine, I then did a complete restart of my macOS machine.
When it came back up MAIL searches were working.... ALL Mail searches were now finding anything I wanted as it had done before the problem expressed itself today.
I find it difficult to believe that pending application updates would break MAIL Search but...... well, I thought I'd mention it.
Well, just to confirm that as I lost the search facility, I tried logging out and logging back in and that worked (for now).
We need a permanent fix though.
These steps worked for me.
these steps helps to me:
Can you provide a screenshot ? Also, goto Mail preferences and make sure the other accounts are enabled.
I really didn't believe this was going to work, but I also really, really did NOT want to rebuild my mailboxes, so I tried it...and it worked! Thanks very much!
I have force quit the corespotlightd process numerous times and no side effects.
Should be fine to repeat as needed, until Apple fix it permanently.
Thanks! Kill "corespotlightd" is work!
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.
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.
Are you the sole user of the device?
People who have multiple users find that the problem re-occurs if another user logs on.
I find that simply logging out and back into MacBook resolves the problem (temporarily). But the problem restarts if another user logs into their account.
This needs to be fixed, as it's frustrating to have to log out and in again as a workaround.
Yes. Corespotlightd must be force-quit - not just quit - and it res pawns itself pretty quickly. It seemed to allow me one successful search and then back to no results for any string. And as it continuously res pawns I'm not sure this is even a viable workaround. It is intermittently successful at best in my experience.
I haven't done that test.
But I have found that if I force quit the core spotlightd process just for the secondary user that doesn't help.
It's only quitting core spotlightd for the primary user which temporarily fixes the problem (from very limited testing).
Mail search not working after Big Sur install
