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Searching through the thousands of emails on my laptop used to be easy with Snow Leopard. Within seconds I would search through entire messages, or who I sent to, or received from, or by subject. That simplicity seems to have been bleached out of Lion. Is anybody else having trouble with email search on Lion or is it just me?
Search is different in the new version but I think better. Type in your search word or phrase and notice that you'll see some finds drop down from the search box in real time. Select one of those. You'll now see some blue text in front of that criteria.
For example, I might want an email I received from Steve Jobs about the poker winnings he owes me. I'd type Jobs and lots of things would drop down including people with the name containing jobs, subjects that contain jobs, and message text that contains jobs. I select Steve Jobs. Now in the text box I'd see:
From: Steve Jobs
And the cursor is still in the search box. Now I type Poker and from the drop down list select Your Poker Winnings. Now in the search text box I'd see:
From: Steve Jobs Subject: Your Poker Winnings.
Over on the left side of the ToolBar I can still select where to search: Sent, All, InBox etc. If that hasn't winnowed the my list I can type in more search criteria.
Apple please resolve this problem. This is serious malfunction and needs to be addressed. The new search might be good for casual iPad user but doesn't work at all with serious business use. The previus mail version had it right. You just typed in the word you wanted to search and then you could select what to search: subject, from, to or the entire message. And you got all the mails in results wich you could quickly browse thourg in preview to find what you were looking for. This is how the search should work. I beg you cange the search back as it was.
I have created a temporary work around for my problem. For example if I am searching for all emails from a company whos email address contains @gasworks.com then type into the search field:
from:@gasworks.com
Make sure not to press return as then the Apple Mail FROM: icon appears and you are back to choosing seperate recipients. All emails that contain @gasworks.com should appear on the left.
Not a perfect solution so still back to you apple!
Well, I solved the search problems just rebuilding the mailbox, now is working fine.
I got help with this problem from an Apple senior advisor and found it is easy to search for email. You must first select a mailbox Inbox, Drafts, or Sent. Put your keywords in the search field and it will bring up everything. It doesn't work if you don't first select a mailbox.
But I don't want it to select from only the one mailbox I selected. I want it to select from all my mailboxes. When you say "it will bring up everything" do you mean from all mailboxes? One mailbox is always selected.
I have five accounts and each shows under Inbox, drafts and sent. Select one of those three groupings and it searches all accounts. I don't know how to search all three groupings at the same time. The Apple tech guy recommended watching http://www.apple.com/apple-events/
and this may also be helpful
Completely agree. Searching in Lion Mail is terrible
I've been able to "approximate" the old bahavior I enjoyed in SL by: making sure "All" is selected in that quick search bar just below the toolbar icons, and then (as some suggested above) entering either: "to:" "from:" or "message:" in the search field, followed by the info I'm searching for...If I want to limit it to a previously "Sent" message, then I'll select that instead in the quick bar, followed by: "to:" and type whomever I sent the message to. I think this just helps speed up the process of telling the program the category you seek, rather than you having to wait for it to present needless options (a frustrating approach in the new interface)...I still prefer the old approach, though!
- robjohn
Actually: there's no need even to select anything in the quick folder bar first: just type: "to:" "from" or "message:" in the search field and the quick bar automatically defaults to "All"; it speeds things up considerably to SL levels (to me)...
- robjohn
That does not work for me. I have 55 messages from someone whose email address has the string "prom" in it in my inbox. If I just type prom in the search field (which defaults to "messasge contains" prom) and hit enter none of them appear. Not a single one. If I type from:prom then the messages appear. So there is a BIG problem: message contains refers to only the body, not the header as well. The problem also occurs when having tried from (enter) and clicking the from: part of the selection to "Entire Message". This also means only the message body. Grrr.
I called Apple support about this. They admitted this was really a bad design flaw and would pass it on to the relevant team in the hope that it would be corrected. I recommend that those similarly inconvenienced do the same to increase the chance that it will be fixed sooner rather than later.
Isn't this pretty much how SL worked, however? You could select WHERE you wanted to search followed by whether you wanted messages "to" or "from" someone (which searched the actual email address); or you could search the "subject" of the message or the "message" body (which didn't include the to/from info)...I don't recall there previously being a "global" search (meaning that, if anything, the new Lion approach at least provides a version of this functionality if you simply type in the field without any ":" based prefix (and -annoyingly - WAIT) - as it will then give you options for what you might be looking for which you can then further click on, etc...)? I still don't think it's the best functionality, but at least (for now) it's workable (to me)...
- robjohn
I've just upgraded to Lion and I was having no joy searching for e-mails From People in my Address Book. Tried re-inexing - didn't work. I then did a search for a different person and it worked fine. The problem seemed to be that some of my contacts have empty e-mail address fields in their Address Book entry before their actual e-mail address. I removed the empty field, and it hey presto! I could then successfully search for that person. However another problem person had no such empty email field, but simply editing their Address Book entry meant I could search for them too. In summary, if you are having trouble search for emails from your contacts, try editing their address card. A very clumsy work around I know, but it worked for me!
Couldn't you just rename the file iTunes media?
In some ways Lion search is better, but in others it's worse. For example if I want to search for an email from someone who uses several email addresses it's cumbersome. Like say my friend steve has 3 email addresses, but they all have 'steve' in them. I'd like to be able to see all of them in the seach results. Also, all people from the same company (or domain). Sometimes it's hard to remember who exactly an email came from. After all, that's the purpose of a computer, right?
Just type: "from: steve" <enter> in the upper-right Mail search field and it will show you all messages from people with "Steve" in their sending address...
- robjohn
OS X Lion Mail - search feature
