[HELP] Search for emails inside Mail app not working - But spotlight search for mails Work!

I just installed the latest version of Mail (Version 7.1)... and my search did not work either... the search found nothing. However, I went into Mail preferences and under "General"

I check marked the "include results from Encrypted messages" for When searching all mailboxes. Search now works again.

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!

Imap accounts are not the problem. The problem is that there is a bug in Maverick that causes some conflict. I also clicked the encrypted message setting in Mail no effect yet. There are a number of error messages when doing a diagnostic in the Terminal related to the spotlight issue but no solution. Just realized read only access for the index appears to be the problem, I guess it can no loger update the index since updating the OSX to 10.9.1. I had no problems before Maverick by the way. I have now changed access privileges under "SDD Information" for the complete SDD. I will post if this did the trick. I did this and also initiated a total reindexing by using the Spotlight privacy option for the complete SDD and releasing it again to be sure.

After having spent several hours with Apple mail engineers, I believe we figured out the issue. This is an indexing problem that was supposed to have been fixed with 10.9.1 update but, unfortunately, the update doesn't catch all Mailboxes and folders. It needs to be fully implemented, and TESTED beforehand, as a part of the next OS update. So here is the solution:

1- Quit Mail app

2- In Finder hold Option key and under Go menu item go to Library

3- Select Mail folder, open V2 folder and go to MailData folder

4- Drag any files that start with "Envelop Index" to your desktop. In my case, I had the following three but there could be more:

Envelope Index

Envelope Index-shm

Envelope Index-wal

5- Open Mail app and be very patinet until ALL your Mailboxes are reindexed. DO NOT INTERRUPT THE PROCESS OR YOU WOULD NEED TO START OVER AGAIN. All your Emails will be reindexed and new Envelop Index files are creted in MailData folder. Once happy, delete the Envelope Index files on your desktop. Happy New Year!

Thank you! This method was first. Did not help me: (

Tried several of these methods in this thread to get searching to work to no avail.

Apples most recent 10.9.1 update says "Improves the reliability of Smart Mailboxes and search in Mail."

The work Improve should not be used! My searching does not work at all in my Mail app. I can even search emails from my iPhone and iPad, but not in Mail. Email is one of the oldest programs and it is crazy how Apple can't get this right. Maybe the Apple folk dont search emails because they have custom databases to handle all of their processes. I on the other hand have almost lost my job because of the loss in productivity and the amount of time I spend trying to manually find emails. I love Apple, but this screw up is kicking me in the nuts on a daily basis!!

After having received today's worth of emails, the fix I decribed earlier stopped working for me too. Based on my discussions with the enterprise group, at least Apple mail team is aware of this problem and I hope they can come up with a fix in the near future.

After another series of back and forths with Apple engineers, it seems that my problem is mostly fixed by applying the following fix:

OS X: After "Apply to enclosed items…", unable to change prefs....

This seems to be an issue with a combination of Spotlight permissions and indexing of mail. I have my fingers crossed.

It is not associated with the problem of searching the mail.

So NeuronX did this work for you ? I a trying this now but am not optimistic I am at a loss what to do, nothing works thus far and Apple is useless in helping to resolve this, spent lot of time on chats with them. This is a known problem now and they they think it is all new.

Our work is heavily depending on Spotlight function it takes a lot of extra time now to locate files or emails.

I do not understand why Apple is not putting out a notice it is working on this. 10.9.1 was not a solution in fact that is when our problems started. For sure I will never ever update right away anymore.

Apple are you reading this ? Please do something thanks.

Fortunately, it seems like it is working. Over the past few day I spent several hours troubleshooting with Apple Mail support engineers (e.g., provided mail database Capture_Data Image, etc.). At first I was not optimistic about this fix either. But after couple of days of testing this fix it looks like it is working at least on my new iMac that came with Mavericks pre-installed (i.e., no OS upgrade!). I'll be applying the fix to my older Macs that I have upgraded to Mavericks and will let you know if for some reason it doesn't work on upgrades. Hope it works for you.

Hi,

Thanks. Thus far no luck it keeps on reindexing can you tel me exactly what you did. I applied enclosed all items on my user folder for two users admin and me. This should do the trick if I understand instructions well no ?

thanks !

HI again

Definitely no effect what so ever on both Macs. Driving me insane. Let me know please if I did the right thing or whether I missed anything, would be much appreciated.

thanks

So the 2nd fix that I described above did not work for me either. After one day worth of new Emails, the Search function is failing again. Any search shows some reults for about 10 seconds and then the partial results that get displayed disappear and I am back to the Inbox. Apple knows about this issue but the Mail app support engineer that I am talking to believes that this situation is an outlier since Search is working fine on their Macs. It is like pulling teeth to get them to see that a lot of people are really wrestling with this issue. We need more people to chime in so they can see that this is universally affecting a lot of folks.

this is bad, my macbook pro after the "fix" screwed up the finder which became unresponsive, mail and iCal id not open anymore etc. I decided to do a clean reinstall which was surprisingly cumbersome, Wasted a lot of time but it seems to have removed the original spotlight problem, i say seems because I had trouble with the migration assistant transfer mail accounts and am still doing this manually. for my Imac i am not doing a clean reinstall because I can not afford to lose even more time at the moment but was told to call Apple to provide engineers with data from the computer.

I find Apple 's behaviour utterly unacceptable in this matter very disappointing. will let you know