Search will not work for any words searched in the email app. I have attempted many times. I use my phone for work and I use the search option in the email very often. This is very frustrating. Apple you need to fix this very soon, please. If Apple can not fix this then I will be very disappointed. I read that a lot of other people are having the same problem.
iPhone 5, iOS 9.0.1
As others have stated, the searches still work...it just takes FOREVER and is useless in my opinion. Sometimes the Search is via the magnifying glass icon (like it used to be) but now also allows (sometimes) the searching of just the "Subject Line" or "People" (does not often work). The problem seems to be if you have a lot of emails. I have about 6 email accounnts on my phone and yes there are a lot of messages in them...but thats my choice and I need them. It worked fine on ios8 and earlier. Way to go Apple. Another brilliant release that was tested with only ideal situations and NOT the real world.
I have the exact same problem. I read somewhere that the email app needs to create an index of the emails, but not sure why, given that gmail, for one, does the search on the server and instantly. This needs to be fixed as I use search all the time and this made the apple email app useless, so I switched to the Gmail app, but don't like it because of the ridiculous way it orders messages in a thread. Hope Apple fixes this search problem soon.
I have exactly the same problem at the moment, and I have now resorted to using outlook as my default mail client. If anyone comes up with a solution please posted as soon as possible.
Well I no longer have the problem with the slow searches. All I did was do a Restore and then an Update from Backup. (make sure you do a backup if you don't have a recent one so you don't lose any of your mail settings, apps etc). It will automatically install the latest ios version.
Now all my searches bring up results within 5 seconds like they used to. Here is a link:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201252
I can only assume something got messed up on my initial upgrade to ios 9 and it had to be redone.
I found that using the new Search screen to the left of the home screen does a good job at searching through recent (native email app) emails via sender, subject, or keyword.
iphone 5
Email search is not working on new IOS 9 Update
