Lion Mail search a downgrade?

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Level 4

1,290 points

Lion Mail search a downgrade?

I've always been satisfied with the Mail.app search facility, until Lion. It works differently, and I can't locate things that were easily located before.

For instance, if I had searched "buy.com" prior to Lion, a list of the messages to and from buy.com would appear, even if "buy.com" only appeared in the address. Now a search yields nothing, even though I have messages from buy.com in my Mail folders.

Is there a way to cause Mail to search as effectively as it did before Lion, or is this a downgrade? This is definitely not an isolated issue for me. I am now constantly not able to locate messages I now are either in the Inbox or another folder, even when I search words that are in the body of a message.

iMac 9,1, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 10, 2011 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Aug 10, 2011 8:47 AM in response to Satchmo

Please take a snapshot of your mail window with a (failed) search and post it here so we can see how you've set things up.

charlie

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Answer 2

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 10, 2011 8:54 AM in response to CT

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Answer 3

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:00 AM in response to Satchmo

I seen now that there are mutlple threads in which this problem is discussed. I didn't find them when I originally typed "mail search" in this forum before creating this thread.

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Answer 4

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:15 AM in response to Satchmo

Yes. Well. Most people don't have this problem, I assume. I certainly have no such problems.

What happens when you use spotlight to search for buy.com?

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Answer 5

Aug 10, 2011 9:13 AM in response to Satchmo

If you want to downgrade, just use AppCleaner (google it) to delete Mail, then install an older version on your computer via apple website.

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Answer 6

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:18 AM in response to CT

CT wrote:

Yes. Well. Most people don't have this problem, I assume. I certainly have no such problems.

What happens when you use spotlight to search for buy.com?

What could be less helpful that this? What does it matter if "most people" don't have a problem if some do, and those some have expressed themselves in this forum.

As a computer user since 1982 I can attest that there is rarely a bug that affects all or most users; it usually affects a subset of users.

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Answer 7

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:22 AM in response to Satchmo

The idea, Groucho, is to establish that this is not normal-acceptable behavior for Mail search.

I see you'd rather vent than accept people wasting their time trying to help.

Adios.

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Answer 8

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:22 AM in response to Child'sViewReviews

Child'sViewReviews doesn't know what he is talking about. Can't be done.

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Answer 9

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:25 AM in response to Satchmo

File a bug report at http://bugreport.apple.com, and include those screen shots if you can.

You need to be a registered Apple Developer to use the bug reporter. You can register (for free) here:

http://developer.apple.com/programs/start/register/create.php

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Answer 10

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Aug 10, 2011 9:27 AM in response to Child'sViewReviews

If you want to downgrade, just use AppCleaner (google it) to delete Mail, then install an older version on your computer via apple website.

1) It doesn't take a special app to delete Mail.

2) Older versions of Mail will not run on a newer version of the OS.

3) There is nowhere online that you can legally download Mail, certainly not from the Apple web site.

4) If you were to find a copy of Mail to download, you'd be stupid to do so, since it could be malware and not actually Mail.

5) Since no part of your post would work even remotely, it's obvious you haven't tried this solution. Refer to item 2.5 in the Apple Support Communities Terms of Use.

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Answer 11

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 10, 2011 10:18 AM in response to Satchmo

Just off the phone after a long stint with Apple support about this.

Spotlight could find the message files. Files that were cached on the POP server (for a month) were searchble, but those stored on the Mac were not.

The tenacioius (A+) Apple support tech traced the problem to the file User > Library > Mail > V2 > MailData > Envelope Index. He had me close Mail, drag Envelope Index to the desktop, and restart Mail, which acted as though it were being opened for the first time. I clicked Continue (I think it said) and Mail restored all of the messages and settings (whew!). When it was done I closed Mail and reopened. Again I had to click through as if it were the first time, and then the messages appeared. It took several minutes for Mail to reindex the messages, which it does independently from Spotlight. It now appears to search properly.

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Answer 12

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 10, 2011 10:34 AM in response to Satchmo

I can also now see that the entire search approach of Lion is now available to me since Envelope Index was removed. The features were not visible before.

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Answer 13

Aug 11, 2011 3:01 PM in response to Satchmo

This trick did not work for me.

1. I can't see the Library file in my home directory; I had to use terminal to find it.

I moved it to my desktop (mv "Envelope Index" ~/DeskTop; quotes needed to access filenames with spaces in Unix).

2. After restarting, mail reindexed (and made a new Envelop Index file). But this did not fix the search issues. :-(

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Answer 14

Satchmo Author

Level 4

1,290 points

Aug 11, 2011 3:08 PM in response to sarah_calumet

Bummer, Sarah.

I'm sure you waited awhile before searching your Mail.

You can start by doing what the Apple tech did with me. Try to figure out if there is a particular date before which the messages can't be located. Check to see if that date is before or after when you have chosen to "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message." in Prefs > Accounts. Mine is set to "after one month" and that was exactly the date before which messages were not findable. That's how we determined that the messages on the server cache were still searchable.

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Answer 15

Aug 11, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Satchmo

Whee! Working now.

After removing the Envelope Index file, I tried searching soon after mail restarted (but maybe too soon?). Then started reindexing spotlight according to other threads (it's still not finished with that). Whichever it was, now it's working.

My symtoms more precisely were that some things worked fine, mainly people. For others, I didn't get the pop-under options ("people", "subject", etc), only something like "search all messages", and the search word never went into a little bubble like it does when type is selected.

Anyhow, the combination of dumping the Envelope Index and reindexing spotlight have fixed it.

Yeah!

Thanks!

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