With the new mail in El Capitan, when I search for mails from a sender, it does not bring up most of the emails from that sender. This renders the search function in mail unusable.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.0.x)
Is it possible that the path in El Capitan is actually ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData and not ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData?
I'm having the same problem. Tried re-indexing spotlight, manually deleting the index files, etc.. but the search function doesn't work at all. Any ideas?
I kept on tinkering both with my Mail and Spotlight searches since neither was working and discovered that for some reason indexing was disabled (in spotlight), so via terminal I re-enabled indexing and re indexed spotlight. After that, I quit mail and erased all "Envelope...." files from Mail (including the ones from maildata in V2 and V3), reopened mail and now everything is working well. I'm no expert so I have no way of knowing if both issues were related but the bottom line is I had no search in mail and no use for Spotlight either, and now both are working fine.
Go to Sys Pref, iCloud and sign out of iCloud, then sign back in and everything should work fine.
If this doesn't work try reinstalling El Capitan: Just power off the iMac, hold command and R and then power the Mac back on. Hold command and R until you see the Apple logo and progress bar. That will boot you to the utilities menu, one of the options you will see there is reinstall OS X. Just click on that, put in your Apple id, and once it completes, try to search.
Apple senior advisors tried both the above options with me and the first one worked.
Yes! ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData -> Delete every file that begins with “Envelope Index” (archive before doing so)
Thanks Maestro1827. When logging out of iCloud, I get a warning that all documents stored in iCloud will be erased from my computer - should I accept and move forward with signing out? Thanks
Thank Michael, I erased all envelope index files and mail re-indexed itself upon opening (it took almost 45 minutes). Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I tried it a second and third time, with the same results. Very frustrating
Thanks. I tried re-indexing through Spotlight and by erasing the envelope indexes, but neither worked.
hm - did you wait long enough for Spotlight re-indexing? You can check progress by searching something like "test" and see the progress bar in the opening window. Takes some hours depending on the diskspace used.
Concerning mail: it helped in my case to first close mail and then deleting all 3 files beginning with "Envelope Index" in ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData
Hi Michael,
I let it run all night, but the search function in mail still does not work. Regarding the Envelope Index mails, I did the same. I emptied my spam and trash folders, closed out of mail and then deleting all three files. I then re-booted and opened mail. Re-indexing took almost 45 minutes, but the search functions still does not work - very frustrating!
Heinzmac, this worked for me, all this info should be on your iCloud, so once you sign back in it will migrate all the information from iCloud back to your computer, and now the search function should work
This worked perfectly for me. Thank you.
Thanks for the recommendation - unfortunately, the search function still does not work. I even tried re-indexing mail manually, as well as through spotlight after completing your iCloud suggestion, but nothing - incredibly frustrating!
I have had the same results. When I past a full email address into the search field, usually I get no results. Then when I start deleting characters from the end of the address, I eventually get results.
When I paste the email address into SpotLight, I see all of the results I know are there, but not the results when pasting that email address into the Mail search field.
Solution?
Michael Wüthrich1'ssolution worked for me.
It seems that the process of indexing for search purposes takes a bit longer and continues in the background. Initially it didn't work as expected, but after an hour or so I'm getting better and better results.
Mail Search not working El Capitan
