Apple Mail search fails

Stylax wrote:

Can anyone shed any light on why this is happening please: I produced a document in Pages which I then copied into two emails using Apple Mail to send to two companies in February this year. I have had no response from either company so I wanted to check the dates I sent the emails out. Searching for key words in SENT and ALL MAILBOXES has found nothing. I have run Spotlight and it too has found nothing. I have the original document in Pages so I clearly created it and I am certain I sent it because one of the addressees was mistyped and bounced back before I corrected it and re-sent it. Is it possible for some sort of indexing to go wrong in Mail such that it fails to find recently sent emails ?

Mant Thanks

Easy enough to rebuild the search index database..

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

I found the best method above all others (including Terminal) is the Macintosh HD drag and drop method.

similar ref: A Spotlight Search, made within an open F… - Apple Community

Apple mail search is broken in Ventura. You can try rebuilding indexes (spotlight and envelope index), but it won't work. The devs know. Hopefully, macOS 14 will finally fix.

I used free Outlook just to find emails now. Or your iPhone.

Problem started with Big Sur, and hasn't been right since.

It's probably a spotlight issue. How do I know? I

can't get into it, but I do know they know search is broken. It "sorta" works and will

find some results. Try typing in a price of an online purchase, it won't find it. Would

find everything in Catalina. I use my phone and Outlook to find mail now. Pretty nuts!

Thank you for your time.

Sad to read it's not yet fixed in Sonoma. Would pay the $99 dev fee just for that.

Trying to lower my Google dependency by migrating away, but having the hardest time. Gmail, Google sheets and Google login are such powerful widespread products. For Gmail compared to Apple Mail it is (i) search and how it filters. (ii) I liked how they archived, starred, reminded,... better. (iii) Integrations with whatever system or startup. Big shoes to fill for Apple Mail.

Oh... How do you know they know?

(how on earth is it an acceptable strategy to just let it linger)