Mail Search & Smart Folder bugs in Mavericks still not fixed in Yosemite?!

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Level 1

71 points

Mail Search & Smart Folder bugs in Mavericks still not fixed in Yosemite?!

When Mavericks was introduced, Smart Folders and Search stopped working correctly for me, and for many many others. There were many threads about it, including a few fixes that would work for a short time - but always the problem would come back.

The problem:

Smart Folders would stop displaying all or some of the messages that they should, and Search within Mail would stop delivering all or some of the messages that it should. I am not discussing Maverick's problems with Gmail, but rather a different long-standing problem with plain IMAP accounts.

Temporary fixes that never stick:

A temporary fix that worked for a while is deleting the "Envelope Index" files in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData and letting Mail rebuild the index. But always the problem recurs in a matter of hours or occasionally a day or two. Using "rebuild" on invidual mailboxes would also fix it for a short while, but again the fix was always temporary. Another fix that would work for a short time is reindexing the mail folders in Spotlight, via Terminal -- but again the fix was always temporary.

Other symptoms:

1. Outside Mail, Spotlight has no problem finding the mail messages that it cannot find within Mail.

2. When deleting Envelope Index files and letting them rebuild when Mail is launched, temporary Envelope Index files are created (I assume this is normal) and not deleted at the end of the process (which I assume is not expected behavior).

3. And yes, this problem did not occur before Mavericks.

I am utterly astounded to see that the problem has not been fixed in Yosemite. For a day or two, I had some hope the problem was gone, because Mail was working correctly for a while, but no -- the problem is still there in exactly the same form. Exactly the same fixes work in exactly the same very temporary fashion.

And yes, I (and many others, I think) filed Mavericks bug reports about this.

With this message, I am mainly reality-checking to see if I am the only one (unless someone has a new magic solution to offer). I am really fed up. Can anyone suggest anything (besides switching to another Mail client -- I have reasons for needing to stick to Apple Mail).

Mac Pro 2008 & MacBook Pro 2013, Yosemite 10.10

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 2:14 PM

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Answer 1

Jim D K

Level 2

215 points

Oct 18, 2014 2:21 PM in response to dpdpdp

My mid 2010 macbook pro mail search has worked fine with Mavericks and Yosemite. But my new macbook pro has never been able to search mail. I'm worried that this is a hard drive or some other hardware issue.

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Answer 2

dpdpdp Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 19, 2014 10:35 AM in response to dpdpdp

(I meant "Smart Mailboxes", by the way, not "Smart Folders" -- but the Support page doesn't let me edit the title any more to fix the typo.)

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Answer 3

Jim D K

Level 2

215 points

Oct 19, 2014 12:25 PM in response to Jim D K

Now i think it's that all my mail is just on iCloud it's not getting to the computer. When i use spotlight to search for mail nothing shows up. But on my older macbook spotlights finds the mail.

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Answer 4

Jim D K

Level 2

215 points

Oct 19, 2014 1:41 PM in response to Jim D K

This fix worked for mine. System prefs>spotlight>privacy. Make sure your hard drive isn't in there if it is delete it. Spotlight will index everything and then mail search works

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Answer 5

dpdpdp Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 19, 2014 1:43 PM in response to Jim D K

Thanks for your suggestion, but I've reindexed my hard drive via Spotlight many times. It never solves the problem for more than a short time, if at all. Glad your problem seems fixed. Hope it stays fixed!

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Answer 6

Jim D K

Level 2

215 points

Oct 19, 2014 2:10 PM in response to dpdpdp

Ok but did you check the Privacy tab in Spotlight prefs? Another thing when you delete those index files they should appear in your trash. I had to restart my computer before i could delete them from trash. I got a Message saying they were still in use even though they were in the trash. Once they were deleted i restarted mail.

I will post if this fix fails at any point.

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Answer 7

Oct 20, 2014 12:50 PM in response to dpdpdp

The same thing happened to me. I have never run into this issue until I upgraded to Yosemite.

I got it to work by doing all the things listed in this thread (rebuilding indexes, privacy settings, etc.) and it worked. For 2 hours. Now I cannot search, use smart folders, access VIP's or anything.

This makes Mail unusable in my opinion.

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Answer 8

dpdpdp Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 20, 2014 2:18 PM in response to Quantumsteep

Sadly yes, that's my experience too. And given that for some of us, this was going on in Mavericks, and was widely reported, it's quite sad that it has not been fixed.

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Answer 9

dpdpdp Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 29, 2014 6:11 PM in response to dpdpdp

Shortly after my last post, I tried rebuilding Mail from scratch: deleted everything and restarted. The result was the longest stretch of working Search and Smart Mailboxes for more than a year - until today, when, wouldn't you know it, it was back to square 1 again. Search doesn't work, Smart Mailboxes show nothing again.

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Answer 10

eevokozm

Level 1

5 points

Feb 18, 2015 9:18 AM in response to dpdpdp

This worked for me: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.appsandbox UnrestrictSpotlightContainerScope -bool true

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Answer 11

Feb 18, 2015 9:22 AM in response to Jim D K

Hmmm. Are you caching all messages and their attachments?

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Answer 12

Feb 18, 2015 10:20 PM in response to eevokozm

Fantastics!!! this worked for me too. Now all searches and all 'Smart folders' ( flagged messages, VIP, etc. ) works like a charm. But as i understand problem in Mail has restricted access to spotlight service?

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