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Mail search totally broken since upgrading to Big Sur

On my home iMac, I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur and mail search works fine.


On my Macbook, I upgraded straight from Mojave, and mail search has been screwed up ever since. When I start typing things, it finds them in the suggestions, but when I select them, it doesn't find them in the messages.


Googling around, this appears to be a common problem, and I've tried several fixes, including deleting and re-adding the search bar. Sometimes they work for a while, sometimes it eventually works after waiting several minutes. Now it appears to be broken entirely.


I have several accounts, including a university exchange server, a Yahoo Account, and two Google accounts, and none of them work, so it's not the server, although I tried deleting and re-adding the Exchange account and it didn't fix things.


This is very frustrating, and I'd appreciate any advice.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Nov 30, 2021 9:01 AM

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Posted on Nov 30, 2021 9:07 AM

Try these: https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/if-searching-doesnt-find-the-right-emails-mlhlp1192/mac


You may also benefit from rebuilding your mailboxes (mailbox > rebuild) in Mail or reindexing your spotlight search https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

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4 replies

Dec 8, 2021 10:00 AM in response to muguy

Thanks, but none of those did anything. Like I said, the frustrating things is that when I start to type something in the search bar, the things I know are there show up as options, so it "knows" they're there, but then it doesn't find them.


Googling around, this is an extremely common complaint that Apple seems unwilling to address. One fix I found was to remove the search bar and then put it back. After waiting for it to re-index, that works for a few days, then stops again.


Now I'm stuck going directly to each server if I want to search for anything. Very frustrating.

Mail search totally broken since upgrading to Big Sur

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