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mail search doesn't show mailbox

When I do a search of Mail in Monterey, it shows found messages, but does not display the mailbox that contains the message. That is not how earlier OS versions behaved. How do I recover that feature?

Posted on Nov 1, 2022 12:23 PM

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Posted on Nov 3, 2022 2:08 PM

Thanks Luis- That solved the problem. I was in Column mode but the OS decided I did not need to see the other columns. Control click allowed me to add what I wanted. It used to be a design philosophy of Apple (I go back to the Apple II and first Mac) that they were easy to use because everything you could do was available in menus. That seems to have been lost along the way. In Mojave, in View/Columns you can choose which columns to view, but they removed that in Monterey. Stupid design decision IMHO. Dave

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Nov 3, 2022 2:08 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks Luis- That solved the problem. I was in Column mode but the OS decided I did not need to see the other columns. Control click allowed me to add what I wanted. It used to be a design philosophy of Apple (I go back to the Apple II and first Mac) that they were easy to use because everything you could do was available in menus. That seems to have been lost along the way. In Mojave, in View/Columns you can choose which columns to view, but they removed that in Monterey. Stupid design decision IMHO. Dave

Nov 3, 2022 9:31 AM in response to David Knecht

Hey there David,


Let's team up to get Mail search working as expected. To start, we'd like to confirm the following details to better understand what's happening, along with ruling out some possible causes:


  1. You mentioned that a specific mailbox doesn't show in your Mail search results, but do other things show, such as other mailboxes?
  2. We see you have macOS Monterey, but the latest version is macOS Monterey 12.6.1. The latest version available is macOS Ventura 13.0, but it's not necessary to upgrade at this time. We still recommend making sure macOS 12.6.1 is installed. You can verify this by clicking on the Apple logo at the top left corner of the screen, then on ‘About This Mac’. This link will show how to first back up, then Update macOS on Mac.
  3. Sometimes unexpected behavior can be resolved with a restart. Check out the section 'Restart' here: Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac


Cheers!

Nov 4, 2022 12:21 AM in response to David Knecht

I don't use Column Layout myself, but this way of selecting columns has been something common on the Mac for a long time.

It also works exactly the same in Finder (in List View), for example. As a long time Mac user, it feels natural.

This capability was removed from Mail a few years ago (though it always worked in the Finder), and I remember lots of people complaining about that.


Oh, and not only you can choose what columns to see, you can also order the columns - just by dragging the headers, and you can sort by column, just by clicking the header. All pretty standard features that at one point (Mojave or Catalina) failed to work, and were brought back in Big Sur.

mail search doesn't show mailbox

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