Rebuild messages index iphone

iOS10.1.1 was on my iPhone 6 , did a backup to iTunes (Win10) , activated the iPhone 7Plus with the restore of the backup all looked fine except message and spotlight search did not find anything prior to the restore

the messages are there and you can read them just not showing up in the search results.

tried everything short of backing the iPhone 7Plus up and resetting the phone are restoring again

AppleSupport gave me a case number 100148795097 but nothing yet, its a real pain this is not working

updated the phone to latest ios10.2.1, backed up, reset all settings on 7Plus - no change, reset the phone, restored the backup, - no change (it even lost the search of the message of the last week), so definitely a bug - basically the restore resets the search index and only new messages is added to the search index for in app search results and spotlight search results

Very frustrating when AppleSupport says talk to your network provider and the network provider says its a device issue talk to AppleSupport

Nothing has really solved this for all of us and Apple appears to be way too silent on this.
I was an early replier to this thread and I'm currently on iOS 10.2.1 now. the messages are there but the part of the txts pre-restore to the iPhone7 never become searchable on my iPhone again although I can see still see the pre-restore txts.

What will happen now with the new Apple File System (APFS) will it impact this issue Apple has with iOS txts?

Can those of us who have this problem and dare to upgrade iOS (only after just backing up encrypted version of our phones) to Apples new iOS 10.3 with the new Apple File System (APFS) feedback to this thread on whether or not the message search problem is fixed by upgrading or not?

I currently have two phones with this problem. The users original phone was damaged, so they were moved to a different phone. One of the phones was restored from a backup on a computer, and the other restored from an iCloud backup. Neither can search any test prior to the restore. They can search text received after though.

While I appreciate Apple's response about the last 200 sent or received texts, it does not apply to this particular issue that we are talking about. Neither of the two phones, I have experiencing this issue, can search and find a text from before the restore. My phone in particular was restore from an iCloud back last week. I do not text that often, and cannot find a text from last Monday. Something is broken here. Please fix this Apple!

Greetings, drebaje. Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Congratulations on your new iPhone 7 on iOS 10! It appears that after having set your new iPhone up from your old iPhone 6 on iOS 10's backup, you're not able to search for text contained in the restored messages. Since they're located on your new phone, those should be included. I'll be glad to helpl
Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup -- Back up your iPhone 7 then restore that backup to your phone.

Have a great day!

I Have the same issue on my and my wife's 7Plus. we both upgraded from 6s plus and the old messages (prior to restore) are not searchable. my daughters iphone 7 is just fine. I tried doing all the suggestions I can find, log out of iCloud and back in, toggle iMessages off and on, changing the language, turning spotlight off for messages and restarting the phone. I even restored one of the two phones from backup and the only searchable messages where the ones after the second restore. I have spoken to AppleCare and they sent it to engineering who wanted to see screen shots. After I provided screen shots their response yesterday was to upgrade to 10.0.2 and once again we are still stuck with the same problem. It certainly seems that the old messages are not being indexed and it is definitely a bug. Just not sure why it is isolated to the two iPhone 7Plus and the iPhone 7 is okay.

Yeah same exact issue and results as MacUserAE. Patiently waiting for a solution...

This has been ongoing for me too. Backup was to computer and restore; moving from my iPhone 6(ios 8) to iPhone 7 plus 256GB (ios 10). Waiting for fix. ...Adding search terms: txt message can't find old message searching by any method spotlight inside search box on iPhone7 ios10.1. would like to be able to search old txt messages too not only new txt messages.

...I notice as a workaround that if I go into an old unsearchable message txt (like from the address book and then I send out a fresh message txt it appears that that the whole older message thread that was not searchable before becomes searchable.) This does need to be fixed. search should really be search of all messages not just threads used since restore.

...apparently the txt messages are stored as SQL database? Apple please escalate to appropriate engineer to fix while we wait patiently.
Tks.

I have escalated it to engineers they Executive relations team. They collected data capture and video showing the issue. The answer is then standard 'we are working on it'. One of the other threads mentioned resetting all settings works to solve this.

Surprisingly, I just helped my parents set up their new iPhone 7plus and both their phones are able to search without issues. Mine and my wife's that we got on say one are still havin the issue.

I'm having the same problem, once I upgraded to IOS 10 it started happening. It has happened with IOS 9 at start of year, a simple restore fixed it up, I have restored 5 times in last few days with no luck, only searches messages that have been sent since restore.

Have contacted apple and sent screen shots, will see how it goes. Google Pixel is looking it might get a shot if not resolved.

I have the same problem after restoring from iPhone 6s to iPhone 7 plus. Kindly assist.

I was able to solve it on my phone. I backed up to iCloud and then reset phone as new and restored from the latest iCloud backup. I tried to do the same in my wife's phone however it is able to search random messages, no pattern to it. Tried to do it several times with her phone with no success.

Maybe I missed a step I did with my and not realized it. Would love to hear if anyone had any success.

reboot_on_iPhone7=[Power-VolumeUP-Volume-DOWN]held in simultaneously:

...I found out that rebooting my iphone7 by closing all my apps then pressing and holding in all three buttons simultaneously did make the 'Messages'search better by a tiny tiny amount but it still remains severely broken search of txt messages even as compared to the 'spotlight'search category results that shows the top 3 of different categories results.

I just upgraded to iOS 10.3 (from 10.2.1) and it did not solve this problem, still cannot search text's prior to restore date.