[Sierra] Really reindex mailbox?

I'm not sure why you are "digging" into the folder structure. Just use All. Mail search should find it if you select All.

Many call Microsoft Outlook a professional email app, but search in it has many more issues than Mail. It's horrible for storing local data. If the Identity gets corrupted you often lose everything. Rebuild no longer exists in Outlook 2016 and rebuild in Outlook 2011 fails more than it is successful.

you could try reindex in mail>mailboxes, but this just re-syncs mail from the domain server (gmail, yahoo)

or you could re-index the mac completly

go to apple log>system prefs> spotlight>Privacy>click the + icon> and mac HD to it

-undo this in about 2mins, then wait for it to re-index your mac

hope this helps

The "reindexing" you are doing is just for the email database to speed up showing the list of messages. It has nothing to do with Spotlight. If you are having problems with searching, you need to reindex Spotlight: How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

sjordi wrote:

Thanks,

As I said, I'm not talking about SpotLight, which works fine, but returns too many results.

What I want to do is have MacMail be able to use it's own search engine within selected "On my Mac" folders, which doesn't work at all.

Yes, I understand that you don't understand. Mail does not have its own search engine. Nothing on macOS has its own search engine. All searching is done by Spotlight.

And, its "Mail," not "MacMail."

And no need to be sarcastic, it's never a s sign of greatness

Neither is stubborn ignorance.

From what you describe and what I have observed trying to replicate it, Mail will only display found messages directly in the folder you select in the search. It will not show results in subfolders.

Send Feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

If you start the search with the mailbox selected and it finds a matching search token you select, but none of the emails are in that specific folder, it will hint that you need to search all by leaving that option showing below the search field.

In general, the search will indicate it has found something by displaying matching search tokens to choose from. Further, if you have a specific search mailbox selected when you change the search criteria, it will drop down the search all token if no matching emails are found in that specific mailbox. If it does match some emails in that mailbox, it will show the results of just the pre-selected mailbox.

Looks like you are judging me.

Why do you feel so insecure, limited, and needy?

If I search for a sentence I know is in a mail stored in a subfolder, Spotlight finds it, mail finds it when "All" is selected.

Now, if I have a folder named "A" that includes subfolders 2010, 2011... 2016 and I click on the "A" folder, it tells me that no strings are found. Even if the targeted mail is stored in sub folder 2014...

If you select the specific folder in Mail, then enter words in the search box, Mail will find items only in that folder. Mail will not look in the subfolders.

I find that using All to search is the quickest and simplest option.