Apple Mail not searching (0 messages found)
Apple mail search stopped working - sometimes 0 messages found, even for searches with many matching messages like "from: Apple" sometimes 1 or 2 out of plenty.
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It sounds as though you need to reindex your mail.
Reindexing your mail on Mac is a process that can help you fix issues with searching, displaying, or syncing your emails. There are different ways to reindex your mail depending on the version of macOS that you are using and the app that you are using to access your mail. Here are some possible methods that you can try:
- If you are using the Mail app, you can rebuild your mailboxes from within the app. This will delete the copies of your emails stored on your Mac and download them again from your mail server. To do this, open the Mail app and select the mailbox that you want to rebuild from the sidebar. Then, go to the Mailbox menu and click Rebuild. You may have to repeat this for each of your mailboxes.
- If you are using macOS Ventura or later, you can reindex your mail by using the Spotlight Privacy settings. This will prevent Spotlight from searching your mail folder and then allow it to index it again. To do this, go to System Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy and drag the disk or folder that contains your mail to the list. Then, remove it from the list and quit System Settings. Spotlight will reindex the contents of your mail folder.
- If you are using an earlier version of macOS, you can reindex your mail by manually deleting the files that store the mail index. This will force the Mail app to create a new index from scratch. To do this, quit the Mail app and open the Finder. Go to the Go menu and enter ~/Library/Mail/ and press Return. Choose the V10 folder (or V5, V6, or V7 depending on your macOS version) and then the MailData folder. Locate and delete any files that start with Envelope Index, such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm. Then, reopen the Mail app and wait for it to reindex your mail.