Lion Mail and Worthless/Failing Searches

Nope, same result.

Then the problem may be tied only to your user account or to your operating system/computer.

A simple test to find this out would be to create a new user, log out of your current user, log in to the new user and just use it to open Mail and link up one or a few e-mail accounts to it. If the Mail application search functions after Spotlight has finished building an index, which is usually noted by the Spotlight icon in the menu bar no longer pulsing a black dot, then I would say your operating system is functioning properly but that your user with the Mail search issues has problems/issues. Again, it is a simple test but not a definitive test, still overall the results should lean one way or the other. I wouldn't advise using this test with the problem account still logged in as it may skew any test results.

I hope this offers a new insight and may yield answers to help you further.

All,

It worked like 2 days for me (see last message) then it was gone again. Did all of these new steps as well, but..... no idex....no index....no index....

I also created a new user and added my accounts in mail, but immediately the same issue.....

It must be a bug on system level.....

Please let anyone have a solution!!????

Is this something we can request Apple (as I haven't done this before I am not aware how to do this)??

Throwing my voice into this black hole...

Same deal here. Searching is worthless in Mac Mail now. Even typing the simplest term retreives NO results. ➖

Very, very frustrated. 😠

After many months of trying various things, the solution presented here, to reindex the users folder using the command line, was the only one that actually worked. Adding and removing the entire volume did not - there was something stuck in the users folder.

Hopefully it will stick and I will not need to do this again.

Thank you!

I finally got it (at least till now!)

Since I also had issues with my Inbox (messages not appearing) I found THE way to rebuild your Mail index, base on these posts:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/22/access-user-library-folder-in-os-x-lion/

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how_to_clean_up_and_rebuild_apple_mail_da ta/

So you have to go to your user's Library folder (which is usually not visible) and delete the index file(s):

• All you need to do is hit Command+Shift+G from the Mac desktop (or Finder > Go > Go to Folder) and type in ~/Library to temporarily access the Library directory in the Finder.
• The go to folder Mail -> V2 -> MailData
• Close Mail
• Delete all ' Envelope Index' files
• Open mail, then the index will be rebuild for the full mail data

Now I can search all my mail again and also via the spotlight !

Hope this helps !

I found this thread searching for solutions to this very problem. I followed the steps above (by remkofromnl) and reindexed my hard drive and now my mail now searches correctly.

As we all agree, this is a hugely important feature that needs to work. I'm so happy I have my searching back.

Terminal, as described by AZloco, seems to be Indexing for me.

The remkofromnl method did not.