Lion Mail and Worthless/Failing Searches

When I do:

sudo mdutil -i on Users

I get error:

Error: invalid operation.

No Index.

Any idea how to fix this?

Thanks,

/Brian

sudo mdutil -E /

fixed it for me. First I tried rebuilding the index using MacPilot but that didn't fix it. The commandline command above must do something extra. Thanks for the help.

/Brian

Doesn't this seem absurd to anyone else?? If I wanted to address issues in terminal and deal with buggy, untested software, I would have just stuck with my Windows machine...

Still can't search mail (or iCal) even after spotlight reindexing. It's very difficult to have great productivity with these issues.

Same issue searching for emails that I KNOW have certain text in them. Problem started after I recently upgraded to 10.7.2 (from 10.6.X) on a Mac Pro 2x2.4 Quad Core. Saw many posts online about deleting the Apple Mail Envelope Index file. Then I ran into ANOTHER problem.. where is my Library folder?? So I had to do another web search for that, found a Terminal command line that un-hid the Library folder (new in Lion):

chflags nohidden /Users/<Username>/Library

(change "<Username>" to YOUR username)

I found the Envelope Index file and removed it manually but then Mail crashed upon reopenening and I got the following message repeatedly, like rapidfire. You can see the multiple windows. This pic below was the second time I tried to launch Mail after manually deleting the Envelope Index. The first time, it launched about 6 of these warning windows:

As I saw previously in this thread, there is a way to have OnyX remove this file. OnyX is free and a great app. Currently it's not on the App Store. Get it from MacUpdate.com. Once you open it up and go through all the prompts and volume rebuilding etc, click on the following buttons/tabs/checkboxes:

Maintenace>Rebuild>Mail Envelope Index (checkmark this one) >Execute

Opened up Mail afterwards - all of my searches were fruitful.

Skol!

Thanks John, this worked for me! An annoying problem but with an elegantly simple solution.

I upgraded a Mac from Leopard > Snow Leopard > Lion 10.7.2

The search in Mail was not functioning as described above.

I tried the solution suggested using Onyx.

I rebuilt the spotlight index and mail envelope index and the Mail search functioned properly after that.

Thanks

This worked for me, read it in a similar discussion:

Click on one of your mailboxes, I did it to all of mine, one by one.

While the mailbox is highlighted, pull down the "Mailbox" menu, click the last choice, "Rebuild"

Took about 3 minutes to do all of my mailboxes, trash, junk etc.

Now mail search results match those in spotlight.

Thanks,

H

I'm having the same issues:

1. Spotlight (in the Finder menu bar) does not return any results, both from documents stored in the Finder, and when searching for emails.

2. Email Search (from within Mail program) does not return any results.

My computer is a 2 month old MacBook Air, currently running 10.7.2. My data was put on this machine from a time machine backup migration. The backup was from a MacBook Pro also runnig 10.7.2, however I don't remember if I had the same issues on that machine or not.

What I have tried:

1. Rebuild Mail index from wihtin mail Mailbox>Rebuild. Result: No improvement.

2. Under System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy, drag teh HD into the tab. Result: "Item cna't be added due to an unknown error"

3. Download OnyX and run: Maintenence>Rebuild>Spotlight Index and Mail Evelope Index>Execute. Result: No improvement.

4. sudo mdutil -i on /. Result: "Unable to perform operation. No Index"

5. sudo mdutil -E / Result: "No index".

6. Followed the 9 step terminal post from FromOZ. At step 7, I had the same "No index" error.

Can anyone help? I believe I tried everything in this thread.

Thanks.

Does anyone have a solution to this? Please see all that I tried in my post above from Jan 10, 2012. Thanks.

John,

Many thanks for this tip. I have been struggling for months to get iCal to search correctly. Forcing spotlight to re-index worked!

Cheers!

B

I may have a solution (so far it seems to be working.)

Open Mail Preferences, "General" tab. Under "When searching all mailboxes, include results from:" de-select all three options. Close Preferences. Open Prefs and reselect the options. Close the Prefs again.

After I did this, my search results were much improved.

Look forward to seeing if this works for anyone else.

OK, here's another work around: If I have anything other than "Inbox" selected in the Mailboxes column, I get all the search results. If Inbox is selected, I only get partial results.

This command line from UCF Sam worked for me. The other tricks didn't. I avoided having to reinstall the OS with this command line. Thanks!

I got it working with your suggestion. None of the previous ones were working for me.

Fresh install OSX 10.7.2 on a MBP 7,1 2.4GHz.

Thanks a lot!