Lion Mail search a downgrade?

Didn't work for me. Not even creating a new user and setting up mail from scratch worked.

Only fix was removing Lion and installing Snow Leopard.

You can turn on hidden files / folders in Terminal (directions here) that makes it easy to navigate through the Library folder.

I had the same issue (very limited search results) and removed 3 files:

Envelope Index

Envelope Index-shm

Envelope Index-wal

Restarting seemed to work fine after it rebuilt itself.

Slightly off-topic, but an easy way to find the now-hidden (by default) user Library folder is to hold down the option key when clicking the "Go" menu in the Finder. That reveals the Library folder and allows you to open it with ease.

Bad news. After re-indexing, and removinging 'Envelope Index' yesterday, today mail search is broken again. Searching has reverted to not finding many words, especially anything in the main message body.

For example, my postings to this forum yesterday resulted in 3-4 emails from "apple support communitties" but a search for "apple" brings up only a single unrelated message from 5/9/2011, in which apple might be mentioned in an attachment.

I've noticed a few strange symptoms:

1. The only option that appears on the list under the search box when I start typing is "people", and selecting a person works fine for 'from' or 'to'.

2. I can search for a subject only if I specify it in words in the box ("subject: item"). I don't know the code to search for a word 'anywhere' ('anywhere', 'any', and 'body' don't work). After typing, for example "subject: hotel", it finds a bunch of messages, including recent ones, with hotel in the subject line. Once I do that, 'subject' turns gray and I can select a little arrow to change it to "any", at which point it only finds a single sent message from 11/2010 with the word hotel in an attachment.

3. Oddly, when I first start entering a word it only finds items in my sent or drafts folders, that is, everything it finds is from me. That was not the case yesterday. On the top bar, the 'All' selection is chosen, and my inbox is highlighted on the left; those options seem to make no difference.

4. Spotlight can't find these messages either. In fact no email messages show up in a spotlight search for anything (ical events and contacts do). I checked the spotlight prefs and "messages and chats" is on.

Any ideas out there??

thanks

In the new Mac LION MAIL app, it's not apparent that you can search for any part of any email address the way you could before with any previous OS, for when you type partial email text in the MAIL search field, it simply gives you a drop-down list of wrong or limited suggestions and none of the suggestions are email addresses, but people's names. I don't want to search by name, I want to search by email address. (Maybe I'm the only one who does this.) If two different email addresses have the same associated name (which I have), it chooses the wrong one and searches for the wrong email address!

But there is a way:

1) Select the mailbox you want to search (if any).

2) Type in the search field:

to: any_string ["return" or "enter"]

OR

from: any_string ["return" or "enter"]

3) Your entry will change from this:

to this:

4) Notice that after you press "return" or "enter", your "to:" (or "from:") becomes a pull-down-menu button and the MAIL's silly choices go away. If you click the button, you get this:

and you can change your choice.

3) Strangely, "to:" or "from:" MUST be ALL lowercase for this change to take place. (It will still work if "To:" and "FroM:" are all or part uppercase, but the change to a menu button will not occur.)

4) On the menu bar below the toolbar, you will see the places to search ("All…Selected mailbox…Inbox…Drafts…Sent…Flagged")

I had the same issue. My problem was fixed by simply going to Mailbox>Rebuild for each of my mailboxes. Simple and worth a try. good luck.

Apple is thinking wrong here.

The problem is that search "entire message" means search "message body", not "To, From, Title, Body and Header" as you would expect, and as it did in Snow Leopard. Making smart folders with other search criterias still work correctly so there is nothing wrong with the technology.

If you had the option to truly search the every part of the e-mail as a default this wouldn't be a problem. You'd find your email in no time. The database is there, the Spotlight engine is working, it's just the search front-end that has been configured by someone who doesn't really thought it through.

I was shocked when I found this.. I mean Lion has been out for half a year and they still haven't been bothered to address this issue. They're forcing me to use Gmail or something. I mean it took me five seconds to find this issue and 10 seconds to understand and verify what was wrong, and 11 seconds to get really frustrated.

If it takes half a year for the Apple QA team to find this they're not doing their job.

Sorry, but this is poor.

Edit:

And while rebuild seems to complete the database, it still doesn't change the fact that you're searching "message body" instead of "all fields".

Suggested fix is addressing the wrong issue.

If you had the option to truly search the every part of the e-mail as a default this wouldn't be a problem.

You do have that option, and it is the default. Just start typing something. I cannot, and never could, reproduce Satchmo's problem, and cannot reproduce what you describe. There is something wrong with your particular system. Thus, ranting and railing against Apple is is quite silly. You should start your own topic, calmly describe your problem and ask for suggestions for fixing it.

You apparently missed the entire point. I was not able to search every part of the email after installing Lion. Default or otherwise. That was the problem. The process I described fixed the problem (should I add some italics like you?) I was hoping this could help someone else with the same problem to solve their issue quickly. It did help a coworker with the same issue. If you consider my comments ranting and railing you must live in a sheltered world. Now excuse me I have work to do and don't with to tie up a helpful discussion broad with dribble.

Sorry for everyone who feel my response was aimed to your post personally.

It was not.

It was for the whole issue, not your solution, nor you as a person.

Search in Lion mail has been funky, and a quick search on the internet reveals that countless of people are having problems.

I didn't feel the rebuild mailbox did anything to help that, but now, a little later I realize it did. So that's great news! Thanks.

The best way to help people on the forum is to ellect the best answer as a solution, then close the thread for further discussion. Does that still work on the forum?

Mark, I was not talking to you.

Reaming me out for what I said to you only works when I actually said something to you!

The best way to help people on the forum is to ellect the best answer as a solution, then close the thread for further discussion. Does that still work on the forum?

Only the original poster (Satchmo, in this case) can mark a post as the correct answer, and he has not done so.