Is there a way to get the lost search functionality back in Ventura Mail ?

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Is there a way to get the lost search functionality back in Ventura Mail ?

Apple say they have improved Mail search in Ventura.

IMHO they just pretty much broke its previously excellent functionality.

With earlier versions, you could start typing a name or a domain, and the search would immediately filter the visible emails to emails from that name, and give options such as "sender contains" and "message contains". Incredibly useful, I used that functionality to find loads of "lost" emails.

No longer, now, even if you type an almost complete email address, it will offer just two suggestions.

Subject contains: person@domain.com

or

Attachment name contains: person@domain.com

I cannot remember a single occasion where I have put an email address (or part of it) as either Subject or Attachment in the last decade. Apparently, it is part of Apple's shift towards AI driven searches.

All very well, but back in the world of human intelligence, and users, this seems like a huge backwards step.

The clunky workaround I adopted is to make a temporary smart mailbox and put the criteria you want to search on in its filters.

Speaking with Apple support, the agents privately agree the changes in search are a bit of a car crash, and didn't have any suggestions to regain the search features, but just wondering if anyone out there has a better solution?

Posted on Apr 14, 2023 5:46 AM

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SdeS Author

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Apr 14, 2023 6:36 AM in response to dialabrain

Thanks for the suggestion dialabrain.

I've played that game before, and it's a long game, if not infinitely long, they don't seem to really respond to feedback.

Unfortunately, the attitude is Apple know best, like nanny knows best.

They have made the search simpler but in the process, made it virtually useless.

I have just started experimenting with the mail Search on Houdaspot, which I started using some time back after Apple hobbled the general "finder" search. It uses the spotlight database as I understand it, but in a better way than apple use it themselves as the filters are easier to apply.

I'm a bit of a "new driver" on Mail but is seems to be the answer, the initial results are good, although it is a bit easy to put something in that suddenly reduces the results to zero.

Its a shame that one has to resort to a 3rd party app to do what Mail (or finder) should be master of, but that seems to be where they are headed currently....like I also have the Bartender app because Apple didn't forsee the problem that app icons in the menu bar disappear behind the camera notch and become unusable. Doh! Who knew? (Well, apart from anyone testing betas of the UI perhaps)

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