Mail Search not working El Capitan

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!

Thanks, but didn't fix it with me. Still the same problem. I paste in an email address, get a few hits, but then as I start deleting the last characters of the address, more hits appear.

A definite bug which Apple needs to fix!!!!

Hmmmm. Now that you respond that way it got me thinking. I had previously used the suggestion that I add my user folder to the "do not search" list in Searchlight > Privacy pane; then go back and remove it. That just might have started up searching again, and I only noticed results after a half hour when I did the header search box delete-add.

Awesome! Open Mail and go to mailbox and click rebuild!!! WORKS! Thanks @LenTS

OMG after transferring data to a new iMac i tried everything to make the mail search work again. Reinstalling OSX 10.11, setting back the iMac using time machine but nothing worked.

On one occasion I realised the problem did occur when I transferred a backup to a new iMac and imported a user profile from an old user which didn't exist in the latest backup anymore. By importing the backup again with latest users profiles everything worked fine. Maybe it was just a coincidence that it helped and the rebuild option would have been the real solution.

I experienced the same issues. I followed multiple corrective actions as discussed on the forum. This instruction worked for me with immediate effect. Thanks for your input - appreciated.

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

Thanks for the insight. I tried your post and sadly I still have the same issue - incomplete search results. For instance in entering an email address into the search field I get one result. Then as a start deleting from the end of the email address, I obtain more results.

Actually I was hoping that with the recent software update our friends at Apple would have fixed this problem. Sadly they have not.

Have you reindexed Spotlight? After you complete the action as I described, I then followed that with reindexing for 5-6 hrs, whereupon Spotlight, iMail was performing as I would expect.

Instructions fro reindexing Spotlight -Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support

Thank you! I tried everything but reinstalling OSX and this worked.

Thank you matt !!

been looking for the solution a days and nights! tried all the solutions on the internet!

yours finally solve my problem!

My search problem was on Outlook, your solution fixed it!

Yep - I ran the command in Terminal, then reindexed Spotlight. Still incomplete results. Searching "All" in Mail for a specific email address, I receive maybe 2 results. However once I start deleting from the end of the address forward, more results appear.

This may also be a problem with relatively large email databases, which mine is. Definitely still seems like an Apple problem/ bug.

Thanks for the good work, however, as it has solved the problem for some.

don't usually post, but this was a persistent problem for me

matt buswell your solution worked for me! Thank you so much!

had to set admin privileges on the user account first though.

Airmail? While there have been a number of fixes which have worked for some, obviously there are any others (myself included) who still have the same problems when searching mail. Perhaps my email stack is higher, maybe it's the combination of number of emails and different inboxes I use - I don't know.

Since Apple has yet to fix this problem, I am now looking for another email app. Anyone have any experience with Airmail? Any other good apps out there? No, I will not use Outlook as I avoid buggy MicroSoft products.

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