Maestro1827
Level 1 (19 points)

Q: Mail Search not working El Capitan

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)

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 10:41 AM

by Maestro1827,Apple recommended
Maestro1827 Maestro1827
Level 1 (19 points)
A:

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.

Posted on Oct 16, 2015 11:52 AM

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Maestro1827

Q: Mail Search not working El Capitan

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  • by David Estes,

    David Estes David Estes Mar 30, 2016 9:31 AM in response to craigfromdevon
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 30, 2016 9:31 AM in response to craigfromdevon

    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.

  • by craigfromdevon,

    craigfromdevon craigfromdevon Mar 31, 2016 12:55 AM in response to David Estes
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 31, 2016 12:55 AM in response to David Estes

    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

  • by Storosk,

    Storosk Storosk Mar 31, 2016 4:11 PM in response to matt buswell
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 31, 2016 4:11 PM in response to matt buswell

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

  • by soufsouf,

    soufsouf soufsouf Apr 5, 2016 7:25 AM in response to matt buswell
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 5, 2016 7:25 AM in response to matt buswell

    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!

  • by David Estes,

    David Estes David Estes Apr 5, 2016 1:35 PM in response to craigfromdevon
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Apr 5, 2016 1:35 PM in response to craigfromdevon

    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.

  • by reluctant_admin,

    reluctant_admin reluctant_admin Apr 10, 2016 4:10 PM in response to matt buswell
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 10, 2016 4:10 PM in response to matt buswell

    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.

  • by David Estes,

    David Estes David Estes Apr 13, 2016 8:05 AM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Apr 13, 2016 8:05 AM in response to Maestro1827

    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.

     

    de

  • by zBernie2,

    zBernie2 zBernie2 Apr 30, 2016 9:25 PM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 30, 2016 9:25 PM in response to Maestro1827

    Wow, I have tried everything in this thread except for reinstalling OS X, and still I am unable to search my email on my Macbook Pro and 2011 iMac.  Both running El Capitan.    I just ordered a new 4k iMac, I hope I don't continue to have this problem!

     

    1.  /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.appsandbox UnrestrictSpotlightContainerScope -bool true

    -bash: /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.appsandbox: No such file or directory

     

    2. Removed all files that begin with Envelope* in ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData.

     

    3. Rebuilt all of my mailboxes.

     

    4. Signed out of then back into icloud.

     

    5. Tried disabling my gmail account.

  • by Patrick McCormick,

    Patrick McCormick Patrick McCormick May 17, 2016 9:36 AM in response to Heinzmac
    Level 1 (63 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 17, 2016 9:36 AM in response to Heinzmac

    version 10.11.5 Beta (15F31a) of El Capitain;  this does not work.

  • by Rick Pickford,

    Rick Pickford Rick Pickford May 17, 2016 10:38 AM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 17, 2016 10:38 AM in response to Maestro1827

    THIS FIXED IT! After much difficulty, this post fixed it. Thank you. RIck

     

    Reply by matt buswell on Dec 8, 2015 1:57 AM Helpful     

    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

     

    See the answer in context 

  • by TheBlackSaint,

    TheBlackSaint TheBlackSaint May 17, 2016 2:35 PM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 17, 2016 2:35 PM in response to Maestro1827

    So being another person who tried everything listed and nothing worked...I finally found something that did. The issue seems to be with Spotlight and the index of Mail. This is what worked for me:

     

    Open Terminal found in /Applications/Utilities

     

    Inside terminal run the command below and then enter your admin password when/if prompted:

    sudo mdutil -E /

     

    You will then see the following output in Terminal:

    /:

              Indexing enabled

     

    For those not familiar with the mdutil command, here is information from the man (manual) page:

    mdutil -- manage the metadata stores used by Spotlight

    -E  This flag will cause each local store for the volumes indicated to be erased.  The stores will be rebuilt if appropriate.

     

    What you are effectively doing via mdutil is telling it to discard and rebuild the index for / (or "root" aka Macintosh HD). After running the command, you can activate Spotlight (CMD + Space) and try and search for something and you will see the indexing progress. Screenshot 2016-05-17 16.30.17.png

     

    I noticed Mail search was fixed a few minutes after I executed the command in Terminal (Maybe Mail gets re-indexed first?). I did not have to wait for Spotlight to complete the index of the entire drive before Mail search worked. Note, Spotlight searches will be limited until the complete index is completed, but Mail worked pretty much right away.

     

    Hope this helps!

  • by Karl Kaufmann,

    Karl Kaufmann Karl Kaufmann May 18, 2016 1:54 PM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (93 points)
    May 18, 2016 1:54 PM in response to Maestro1827

    I've done this, and still run into issues. When Mail search (and/or Spotlight) aren't responsive, an easy fix I've found:

     

    In Terminal, enter:

    $ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

    (You will be prompted for your admin password)

     

    Then:

    $ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

     

    Unlike other methods, this doesn't take much time at all, and I haven't come across any adverse effects when using it.

  • by TheBlackSaint,

    TheBlackSaint TheBlackSaint May 19, 2016 5:31 AM in response to Karl Kaufmann
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 19, 2016 5:31 AM in response to Karl Kaufmann

    Good to know. I'll try this next time and see if this is a more immediate fix. It would be nice to not have to reindex root every time it happens.

  • by mrsungo OKC,

    mrsungo OKC mrsungo OKC May 23, 2016 2:26 PM in response to Maestro1827
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 23, 2016 2:26 PM in response to Maestro1827

    I tried all the commonly recommended solutions and none of them worked - deleted envelop folders, reinstalled OS X, tried the terminal command. No luck.

     

    After I saw the post suggesting that Cocktail may have been causing an issue I decided to try updating Onxy. (I use that instead of Cocktail.) I had tried using Onyx to rebuild the index before but no luck (was using an older version). When I updated to 3.1.6, and had it rebuild, and delete the old version... it worked.  It had to reimport the mail, but I now get results when I search mail again. (YEAH!)

  • by spotco,

    spotco spotco Jul 19, 2016 4:01 PM in response to Rick Pickford
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jul 19, 2016 4:01 PM in response to Rick Pickford

    After updating to 10.11.6 search/spotlight would no longer work in Mail.  I tried everything like re-indexing to reinstalling the Combo update but nothing worked.  Then came across this terminal command.  Works now!  Thanks Rick!!

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