Search feature in mail finds nothing with Mavericks

I had the same issue (search worked in spotlight, but not in the Mail app itself). I reindexed the entire harddrive via the instructions here (drag over your entire harddrive, not just the "Mail" folder).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It fixed the search function in the mail app. Thanks to whoever suggested it.

Description did not help me. Waiting for help.😟

Discussions were still here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5486189?start=30&tstart=0

and here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5673556?start=30&tstart=0

I already wrote that the problem is using the Imap protocol. If you create a folder in the mail, which will only be on my MAC, the results are displayed in the search! Once again, that system 10.8 everything worked without problems!

I too have had terrible problems with mail indexing, under ML and Mavericks. Eventually I got it working, but it has been completely broken by a system reinstall, due to drive failure exacerbated by the evil time-machine bug that excludes applications and renders migration assistant unable to transfer data to a new drive. Anyway, if you can find messages with spotlight, then in mail you can try:

Highlighting individual folders and then choosing Mailbox -> Rebuild from the menu in Mail.

I think you can do several at once, but it is clear that highlighting a top-level folder does not seem to traverse the tree to lower level folders. They have to be highlighted as well.

I have the same issue in Mountain Lion - could clearly see the mails in Inbox but Mail app search wouldnt find them by senders name - which it prompted ! How silly when technology provides all these bells and whistles but can't do basic stuff properly.

Two fixes (not solutions, but the fixes might suggest solutions).

1. In the search box I changed "From" to "Entire message" and it showed up the mails - however why won't it find the sender when searching "From" ?

2. So I check ed and the senders email addy wasnt entered in Contacts app. Adding that immeadiately fixed the problem. But what if I am searching for email from someone NOT in my Contacts list - like a company that I am just buy one product from last month ?

Still waiting for a solution and will try a complete Spotlight re-indexing however this person has sent me emails dating back a year or more so I doubt that's the issue.

PS all POP mail - held on local disk - not IMAP

The email indexing problem was solved with the last Maverick update. 🙂

No it wasn't.

No it wasn't. 😟

Tried all the fixes described.

Mac User for >23 years.

More than 30 Macs all types purchased

Never had such a problem as with mail in mavericks.

What a disaster!

First time I have complained about an apple product.

It's like being sold a car without brakes!

Fix this ASAP.

Pretty please!

I actuall wen into the g-bar and ended up reindexing my entire drive and then reindexing just the mail. It woirked great for me but this is a known issue. Good luck.

Same here. Been using Apple computers for a very long time. Only until Mavericks have I ever had problems. Maybe its the curse of the cat, ironic that they ditched the cat name for Mavericks and then it's the one with problems.

Except the problem exists in ML too (see above). Reindexing right now.

How I miss my Apple Macintosh SE (not)

My ML is fine. Someone said that it's possible it's linked to IMAP but my mail has both IMAP and POP and both were affected.

One thing that did seem to work with my latest rebuild, was because the messages were still on the server I could delete the account, re-add it and have everything download again. Yes, this was 35Gb or so of stuff, so a decent connection was required to make it clip along. It took a while for the indexing to happen - mdutil etc. running heavily in the background overnight (it made use of multiple processors, I was pleased to see). However, search does seem to work well for me now.

There's another gotcha though: if you have certain senders stamped as VIP's, then they get auto-filed into a VIPs folder. Searching Inbox for those messages does not work. Searching All does, for me at least.

My problem seems worse then everyone I have seen all over the net. My search yeilds nothing. I have done the indexing, both of Mail and Spotlight, deleted the envelope files in Library/Mail/V2, rebuilt every mailbox, exported mailbox, synced the accounts, removed the account and re-added it... everything. I've tried the Terminal commands listed here. It began when I imported all my mailboxes to a newly reinstalled computer with a new primary drive. All the emails are there and everything else in Mail works fine. No search.

If anyone has another idea, please help me!