mail search function not working in MacOS Sonoma

As a final resort, I rebooted. Problem solved.

In my personal experience all of the search processes came back to life.

It's important to reiterate that the problem was caused by Goodnotes upgrade. The above process solved the problem but it reappeared when I opened Goodnotes again. I have since deleted Goodnotes from my computer and followed the above process again and now all searches are working as designed.

Thank you for your reply. My tech department reinstalled the previous OS, so I could use Mail Search which is important to my work, so I am unable to perform the function you are suggesting. I am not willing to upgrade to Sonoma OS again, until I have an understanding of what is causing the problem. I will forward your suggestion to my tech dept. and get their thoughts and if they had already tried your suggestion.

Cheers, Marcus

This worked for me for about a day.. Then had to uninstall iCloud account and mail accounts, then reinstall. After spending a week doing this is downgraded as well. This problem for me was in mail & messages. Didn’t check notes that I recall.

Did not work for me on MBA M2. No method worked until now. I normally get a number of hits (under the search field) but no result shows. If I click in a mailbox without clearing the search field first, Mail hides all messages in that mailbox as if it were showing me a search result. I configured another mailer for now as it is impossible to work without mail search.

I see what you mean. I kinda ran into same issue when helping resolve my friend's MBA M2. It did not work in the first shot. Then I rebooted the computer again and reran the commands. After that , it started rebuilding index. And the search result starting popping up... Not sure exactly which step actually did the trick. YMMV

This is strange and unfortunate. 14.2.1 did it for me as soon as I rebooted after the update. I had struggled for weeks before that and tried everything I could find but nothing worked. I had assumed a bug was resolved in 14.2.1 that would solve it for everyone. This is also a bit scary because it means it could return in another update still with no clue about cause or solution.

I tried this and had success. However, after about 3 hours mail search stopped working again.

I'm sorry to hear that!

I did the SafeMode process and it seemed to have worked. I'm keeping an eye on it. You'd think Apple would have figure this out by now.

Good luck!

JK

Thank you for your response. Good to hear you have had no issues. Yes, I had no problems with the previous OS, so much so that I have reinstalled it. The issue was specific to Mail search.

Cheers, Marcus

Same here. The search bar in Mac Mail is not working in my newly updated Sonoma OS with a MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 Chip. Nor is the overall search function (spotlight) for my machine. SUPER frustrating and damaging to my ability to do my job.

Ralph: Will your process return search capability to System Settings and to Cmd-F "Searching This Mac," as well as to other programs unrelated to mail, which have lost their search functions with the Sonoma upgrade?

I'm certainly no expert and spent some time searching for solutions to the problem. I tripped over the Goodnotes issue simply because having solved the problem I opened Goodnotes and the problem arose again. From there I found a notation on the web that highlighted the same problem others were having.

All I can suggest is to try the above process and if that doesn't work I'm afraid I can't offer anything sales that might help.

Try rebuilding the mailbox or resetting the Mail preference and that should help.

Open Finder, go to-

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences

Here delete com.apple. Mail.plist file. After this restart the Mail and the issue will be fixed.

If that doesn't work then here's a detailed guide by me that you follow to fix Mail Search function not working in macOS Sonoma.

Hello,

I understand that you're experiencing difficulties with the mail search function on MacOS Sonoma, and I appreciate your frustration. I recently encountered a similar issue and found a solution that might help you.

I've detailed the steps I took to resolve this problem in a blog post, and I thought it might be beneficial to share the information with you. You can follow this guide to Fix Mail Doesn't Work with Sonoma.

I hope this proves helpful to you and others experiencing the same issue. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to ask here in the community.