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 feel your pain. I couldn't take it anymore. I bought the App Postbox for 50 bucks. It took me a bit of time to adjust but now, after several months, I am never looking back or missing apple mail at all. It's absurd that they shipped an OS that breaks mail's usefulness SEVERELY. Try postbox. I have no affiliation with them other than that their app restored my sanity.
THIS TOTALLY WORKS FOR ME!!!!!!! FOR ABOUt TWENTY MINUTES!!!!!!!!
I absolutely LOVED how Apple recommended this 'fix'. IT totally 100 percent works! For a little while. And hten you have to do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. Imagine, coming to your computer, realizing you need to search for something in your mail....then realize that the ONLY F-ING way to do it was to do this:
EVERY ****** TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!
EVERY SINGLE ****** TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And it's been doing it since I bought it in August '20. And I've let Apple know multiple times. EVERY SINGLE TIME they tell me they've never heard of this problem. I've even reinstalled system software. Nothing works.
Oh... and by the way... my bluetooth keyboard and mouse and trackpad all lose connectivity every once in a while. With full batteries. My productivity since I shifted to a massively faster processor, way more ram, and a huge monitor instead of my 12 year old macbookpro? Well, it's gone way down.
Thank you @NevadaDan. Rebuilding the Mailboxes worked for me. :)
Click the "x" in the search field to clear the search criteria and mail will (should) instantly show all messages.
For those who are experiencing this issue please consider providing feedback as a bug at Apple’s Feedback site for Mail here:
quit mail
open the Mail while holding the SHIFT key
quit mail
open the Mail while holding the SHIFT key
quit mail
restart the Mac
I rebuilt the mailboxes, which didn't seem to work, then overnight my computer finally upgrade to 11.1 (been putting it off), and that seems to have fixed it for now.
Anyone else?
So far the reinstall of OS has solved my issue.
Oh, and the fix of restarting corespotlightd remains the same.
(Perhaps a temporary kludge would be a script that detects a user logging out and restarts corespotlightd?)
Stopping corespotlightd worked instantly on both my devices - hooray! None of the previous remedies ever worked. Now, can the problem be fixed so I don't have to do that again?
> System Preferences > Software Update
OR
> About This Mac > Software Update...
Go to Tab bar
Tap on View
Tap on Customize Toolbar
Drag “Search” into Toolbar
:-))
Hello Everyone,
Reasonably new to the Apple Community so I am not sure if I am posting an updated correctly or not.
I want to say thank you to everyone who responded and offered assistance.
I was back at it this morning and after closing mail completely and opened a couple more times with Shift + Mail, closed and rebooted a couple times and now everything seems to be working correctly.
I generally use my mail pretty much like a data base, consequently I have a large amount of info in my mailbox files.
I should probably store or archive a portion of my mail inbox folder in lieu of leaving everyyyyything in my inbox.
I think I will look to see if I can find a good tutorial on Apple Mail that might allow me learn and use my mailbox folders more efficiently. Back in my pc and Windows days, I remember when the inbox reached XXMB everything locked up and stopped working.
Thank you again everyone, I am really happy knowing this community is here and available.
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.
Read this, thought, up down up down left right left right b a start
But I did it and it worked. (fixed for now, maybe)
Possibly a simple restart will do the trick.
shift quit, shift quit, restart, akums razor sometimes.
Mail search not working after Big Sur install
