cannot search messages after upgrading to iOS8!!!

I was having the exact same issue on my iPhone 5s after upgrading to iOS 8. I found an old forum topic here that recommended switching the language on the phone and then switching it back. While this seems extreme, it worked and now I can search my messages again. I suspect this has something to do with a database cache that is forced to reset in the language switch, but whatever it is it worked for me. Best of luck!

After relentlessly switching languages back and forth out of sheer anger and desperation (Lol), it finally worked for me. But I did something different at the last time. After switching to Spanish, I waited 30 seconds. Then toggled off and on Messages in Spotlight. Then while still in Spanish, did a search and it started to search of all 1.3GB of Messages worth that I have. Switched back to English, started to search, it seems to restart the indexing all over again, but rebuilt pretty fast and now all is back to normal - meaning I can search all of my 1.3GB of Messages again. I know, I have tons of texts, but that's another topic. Finally, I removed the Spanish keyboard. I'm a happy Apple customer again.

Looks like our complaints reached the right people. iOS 8.1 is supposed to resolve this issue. See below:

Yeah!!!! I'm downloading it now. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it works.

I also did everything on my iPhone 5 from changing language to resetting all settings. Nothing worked, but iOS 8.0.2 fixed it. Moreover spotlight search in messages is far more improved.

Had same problem on an iPhone 5C iOS 8.0.2.

Tried to change the language - did not solve the problem.

Toggled iMessage off in Settings - Messages. That made the in-app search function work again.

Toggled iMessage back on and search is still working.

But the search results are not entirely consistent. There are messages, that the in-app search will not find but Spotlight on the home screen will.

Why??

Ok, here's my story, hopefully it'll help those of you who are still having problems with this.

When I upgraded to iOS7 last year on my iPhone 5, I had the same problem. This distressed me greatly, because I manage apartment buildings, and I keep track of tenants contact info in my text messages; as long as I use their name somewhere in a text, I can search it to find their phone number, or if I miss a call from a tenant, I can search for the phone number in my messages, and see any texts we exchanged so I can identify who it was. So, when I can't search messages, it makes it a real pain.

I finally found that if I did an iCloud backup, erased the iPhone, and restored from the backup, the message searching worked again. Problem solved.

Now, with 8.0, now on my iPhone 5s, the same thing happened. I said "crap", but I knew what to do - I backed up to iCloud, erased the phone, restored from the backup, and boom, message searching worked.

For a while. Then it stopped. AARGH! I did it again. Same thing - worked for a while (like half a day) then stopped. That's when I tuned into this message thread. I tried switching languages. No luck. I updated to 8.0.2. No dice. Tried switching languages again. No cigar. Then I did the backup-delete-restore again, and finally, it started working, and it has stayed working for a couple days now. Whew!

I never tried switching languages multiple times and waiting and all that rigor that was posted more recently, but it certainly seems that 8.0.2 was the difference in at least getting the backup-delete-restore method to work, so if you're having trouble still, try that.

No way!!! you are awesome @Joelrubi!!!!!, this not only fixed my spotlight search issue but also fixed a music library issue I was having while searching by Artist, some artist were showing up as double and search wouldn't find over half of my music.

But yes like most people already mentioned key is to wait 30 sec after switching the phones MAIN language to SPANISH, then toggle the spotlight option for messages off and on, wait like 10sec do a few searches and searches began to work slowly. After that return your phones language to English, restart your phone and everything back to normal 🙂😁

Thanks again guys

After trying the Language "solution" about 20 times, with every different version of it.....nothing worked. Then I went in to the keyboard, turned of Emoji and Spanish (I never turned Spanish on to my knowledge, so I am guessing that it added to my keyboards when I switched language. Search works like a charm in both the "Messages" search bar and the "Spotlight Search"

Settings> General> Keyboard> Keyboards> English> QWERTY (I already had on QWERTY and never actually went to it, but just letting you know what mine is set on)

After trying everything suggested here and countless other options, I elected to "Erase All Content & Settings" and set back up through my iCloud back up. It's not saomething I necessarily wanted to do, and it took a while, but after all was said and done, I am now able to search through my messages. This has been the only thing that I have seen work. If you need to search through your texts and iMessages as badly as I have had to, I suggest doing this. Hope it works for you.

After trying the Language "solution" about 20 times, with every different version of it.....nothing worked. Then I went in to the keyboard, turned of Emoji and Spanish (I never turned Spanish on to my knowledge, so I am guessing that it added to my keyboards when I switched language. Search works like a charm in both the "Messages" search bar and the "Spotlight Search"

Settings> General> Keyboard> Keyboards> English> QWERTY (I already had on QWERTY and never actually went to it, but just letting you know what mine is set on)

I'm on an iPhone 6 and updated to 8.0.2. had same problem with text search not Working. Changing the language to Spanish did not work. Toggling iMessage off and then searching for something and then going back and toggling it back on did work perfectly for me. Now my message search function works fine.

I have an iPhone 5S with iOS 8.0.2 and I tried the suggestion of changing languages and changing back to English. I also unchecked messages from the spotlight search menu and then checked it back on. One of these did the trick and fixed my search function inside of my text messages app. Thanks!

surprisingly, i just left my phone connected to WIFI and it all came back. it solved the issue. i can now use the search bar to search some of my old SMS.

just a quick note, changing the language to CHINESE and back does not solve the problem. So I'm not sure if all languages are the same. Changing to spanish and back did solve the problem.

I restarted my phone, tried it "current" mailbox search again and the it worked this time. Thanks Ceppy!!!