Mail Search not working El Capitan

David follow my communication with heinzmac, that should solve your problems.

Sorry to ask could you also click the "this helped me" button on my comments in this forum.

Matt -

Thanks, but still no change. When I search by pasting in an email address (searching All), at first results are only one or two which are usually in my inbox. As I start deleting the end of the email address, more results appear - usually when I have deleted .com from the end. With some addresses nothing appears until I am left with the beginning 8 - 12 characters of the email address.

My vote is there is a bug.

de

Thank you so much - could not figure out why mail search wasn't working and this solved the issue - thank you!

Success at last. First I tried a few of the suggestions in this thread but none worked. Called Applecare and tried a few more things, including setting up a test account to see if it was the OS or my account that was the problem - the test account would not search for mail either, indicating it was an ElCapitan problem. So I re-installed using the steps you described. It took several house for the process to complete, but it solved the problem. Be sure to back up your computer first, just in case. Here's the link I was sent for the steps to follow.

How to reinstall OS X on your Mac - Apple Support

Thank you matt buswell. Below helped me 🙂

Open terminal from the utilities folder.

Paste this in sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.appsandbox UnrestrictSpotlightContainerScope -bool true

Press return

enter your password.

open mail

Mail search will now be back to normal

OK, I'm doomed. I tried re-installing the OS to no avail. I still get incomplete searches, fixed only when I start deleting the last characters in the search item. My vote remains that it is an Apple problem, especially given the number of users participating in this discussion and the dearth of Apple folks answering with a viable solution.

Hopefully the next OS update??

This worked for me. I'm using FileVault encryption and it seems to have exposed a few bugs like these. Thanks for the suggestion!

Hi!

How can i do the terminal thing you mention (so via terminal I re-enabled indexing and re indexed spotlight)?

Thanks

I also have this problemon three computers. My colleagues have this problem. It costs a lot of time. Sometimes I can find the emails if I use Spotlight search instead.

I tried everything. Called apple, they told me to make an appointment at genius bar. Did so. Answer was, we have not heard about the problem (?). Solutions offered were the usual (done that all - rebuild mailboxes etc. ) and if that does not work to switch to Thunderbird or other mail programs and to use as a last resort Onyx. I was not happy with the answers - why do I go to the apple store to have this issue solved. I have other things to attend to. I asked for the supervisor. Was told that this was one of the best people they have who has a lot of experience and that they can not help me further, but if enough people have this problem, and report it, then they may escalate and address it. Same actually at the apple helpline, they said if other people have a similar problem it will get addressed in the next software update. has apparently been around for a long time and has still not been taken care of.

sad service, guess we need to switch where we buy computers.

Cannot find some messages searching (Command F) in Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.11.3 El Capitan. Frustrating.

If something doesn't work in OS X 'just reinstall the OS' this answer crops up all the time and is the most absurd thing to suggest IMO

I tried deleting the envelope files. Nope. Made sure in system preferences for Spotlight under privacy that it was enabled for mail and for the hard drive containing mail. Nope. Went into Mail Mailbox menu and selected rebuild. Then search started working.

Finally we found a solution to the "Mail not searching" problem, but it hinges on the fact that we are using the "Cocktail" utility on our iMac. Here's an illustration showing how we solved it:

coutant dot com slash spotlight-indexing

If you're apprehensive about following a hyperlink (and who isn't), and you're running Cocktail, launch Cocktail, select "System," and in the window that opens select "Spotlight." Verify that "Indexing enabled" is selected. (Who knew Spotlight is responsible for Mail's "search" function?) Quit Cocktail, restart your Mac, and chances are good Mail will search the way it is designed to do. Hurrah!

Removing and re-adding the search box in the header did the trick for me! Such as simple and non-invasive approach!