"Some Results May Not Appear" Error in Mail after iOS 18 update

I finally broke down and went through the excruciating troubleshooting with Apple support and we did manage to fix it.

What we did was:

• Turn off iCloud mail on the local iOS Device (Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Mail)
• Choose an alternative default mail client (Settings > Apps > Default Apps)
• Delete the Mail App (Touch and hold on the Mail icon > Delete App)
• Give the iPad about a minute to delete the existing data and the Mail App
• Head to the App Store and download the Mail app again
• Reset the Default Mail app to Mail (as above)
• Restore any non iCloud accounts to Mail (it will turn on the iCloud Mail option automatically on reinstallation)

This worked on my iPad and I now have parity in searches with my iPhone at least. I’m hoping the rest of the indexing will happen overnight.

That's not what it's saying. It's saying that there are a lot of emails in your mail boxes that it has to download and/or index and until the indexing has finished it can't. This doesn't mean new mails, it means the mails that are in your mailboxes. Leave your phone charging overnight and connected to wireless and it will get on with it and pretty soon you'll be able to search all your emails.

From @pzeitler on page 2 of this thread:

"in mail settings toggle organize by thread on-off. It worked for me."

THIS WORKED FOR ME TOO.

@applesupport

Try toggling “organize by thread” off-on, in settings/Mail. Worked for me.

Toggling organize by thread fixed it for me

Turn off iCloud private relay.

go to settings

Icloud

private relay

looks like everything is good now for me

I've just checked this on my phone. I'm getting the same message, but I'm not having any problems finding mails. I've compared searches for mails that are new and old (going back 15 years) and the searches on the phone find everything that the Mac finds.

What are your iPhone Mail Privacy Protection settings. If you've got "Block All Remote Content" turned on then try turning it off for a couple of days to see if it makes a difference.

I see the same "Some Results May Not Appear" message but all my messages appear.

What happens if you search from the home screen? Swipe down from the middle of the home screen and you should get a search bar. Enter a search term you know should have lots of message hits. Hit return and navigate to the Mail search returns. Hit "search in app" at top right of the Mail search returns.

I've commented before. Tried all the different tricks that everyone has suggested. Nothing has worked. I've had to download the Yahoo Mail app. I did this because I get notified immediately via that app if I have email. I have always liked the Apple Mail app well enough over the years and hope to begin using it again if these issue are fixed. I will say that, as a workaround, using the Yahoo Mail app to see the full archived emails. You can also download the Outlook Mail app which will also function as the Yahoo Mail app.

To summarize, use the Yahoo Mail (or Outlook Mail) app to:

(1) Be notified immediately if you have mail in your inbox

(2) Be able to see all of your archived emails

What are the privacy protections - see my earlier post.

BTW - you're not contacting Apple through this forum. No one from Apple reads these messages apart from the Mods.

Have you got Private Relay turned on. If so then what happens if you turn it off.

I'm not an Apple employee. The accepted consensus around here is that Apple don't monitor these boards and if you want to tell Apple something then it's either via the feedback site or by contacting support.

I asked about the Privacy Protections settings because they mess up Mail on my Mac. If I have "Block all remote content" turned on then it can mess with mail messages and older ones are sometimes blank of content. I turned it off and everything worked fine. I don't use iCloud mail.

I asked about Private Relay because there have been issues with Private Relay and iCloud and firewalls since 18.something and it's wonderful "categorization' feature of messages. If, as you say, your mail problems have been going on since before that then it can be ignored.

Finally, the "Some results may not appear" pops up every time I do a search on my iPhone, but as far as I can tell I'm not missing any messages in search. I've searched for recent stuff and very old stuff and results on the phone match the Mac. Obviously I can't make a definitive statement but I've just done a search for text that I know only appears in 3 mail messages and all three show up on the phone, together with the "Some results may not appear" message. It 's found everything but still gives the impression it might not have, which is not very helpful; I'm not saying that in your case the message is invalid - I'm just trying to help.

On my iPhone (18.2.1)

Settings/Apps/Mail/Privacy Protection/Block All Remote Content

No Sender. No subject. When you click on the mail item itself, it has both, but you can’t find what you’re looking for because both sender and subject are missing when viewing in List view. This started with the iOS 18 update. I’m hesitating to do the newest 18.2.1 because I finally have things sort of working. Afraid it will break all over again.

Gmail into Mail app lost all subfolders when I added the recommended forward slash. All I saw was inbox. I removed the / and restarted -/ voila! Folders returned, though I still don’t see SENT. I’ve resorted to checking gmail app now and then to see what’s missing. (Waiting for confirmation code emails has been especially challenging as they sometimes don’t show up in Mail)

Using a vpn or even a “lite” vpn like Aura breaks Mail importing.

Be sure to shut down and then restart phone after making settings changes in mail preferences. It seems to help.

Have you checked to make sure mail messages are actually missing? I get this warning at the bottom of all my email searches but there are no messages missing from my phone as far as I can tell. I've tested it with unique words in mail messages and by comparing search results against my Mac. All my mails are on my phone, but every search gives this warning.

I'm not defending it - it's a dumb message if it's appearing whether it's true or not cos it's not hard for Mail to work out if stuff isn't downloaded yet and it's annoying a lot of people who perhaps don't need to be annoyed.

I have the same messages when searching via the native iPhone Mail app. I toggled the "Organize by Thread" on and back off as someone suggested but no luck. Some also suggested that the message wasn't accurate and that all the available results are indeed showing. To verify, I downloaded the Yahoo Mail app and Outlook Mail app. A search did reveal that there were older emails that weren't showing up. Some of those emails were 4-5 years further back. So I am not seeing the full set of results in my search on the iPhone Mail app.

Totally off topic, but I still am not being immediately notified of new mail which started with iOS 18 update. I've resorted to using the Yahoo Mail app and Outlook app just so that I'm updated immediately of new emails. What's the point of even using the native iPhone app??? It's useless. I will say that this seems to have affected only my Yahoo mail. My school email and my Apple email alerts me immediately with pop up notifications and sounds.