Search function in Mail not working

Try rebuilding the mailbox.

Rebuild mailbox

If that doesn't work, try re-indexing the mailboxes. This can take awhile if you have a lot of mail.

Reindex messages For El Capitan, try looking in V3. Sierra use V4. High Sierra use V5.

Reindex messages (2) See post by Linc Davis

I had same problem today - search would not find anything! I have resolved though.

After quitting and restarting Mail there was no difference, so I will usually go through a standard routine of shutting down, restarting while holding down the 4 keys to ZAP the PRAM (alt, command, P, R) you'll hear a bong... I always hold the keys down till it does another cycle and bongs again!... then once it has started up, I quit any programs and then go to Utilities to open up Disk Utility, and then choose the First Aid repair and run that.

After I did that I opened up Mail and the search then worked. Sorry if I'm teaching to suck eggs on the zapping the PRAM stuff, but I'd sooner be clear than assume people know how to do that.

Good luck.

I'm using High Sierra 10.12.6 on a Retina 5K 27" late 2015 Mac. I just today have had the some problem for all mailboxes and individual mailboxes. I tried a number of remedies with no success. So I tried something simple. I logged off, shut down, and restarted the computer and now Mail search works normally.

400 miles... where are you - in outer Mongolia?

I am already on High Sierra 10.13.3 so maybe worth an update.

I'm no expert, but I have to think it's something to do with the indexing, as it sounds like it's lost that. There was someone suggesting you dump the preference pList settings for mail I think, which just gets replaced with a new one on restart. But have you tried rebuilding each of your mailboxes? It's the bottom option under the Mailbox menu... can take quote a while depending on the size of your mailbox, but nothing to lose.

Thank you... I had the same issue and it was doing my head in for ages. I deleted the .plist files that had the random letters and numbers at the end, restarted my Mac and now the search function in my email is finally working again 🙂

Hi I had this problem too, and none of the rebuilding, etc., worked. Here is what I did.

I went to my Library by holding down the option key while clicking on File > Go (to reveal the invisible library). Then I went to Preferences and found com.apple.finder.plist BUT I ALSO found an additional file named something like com.apple.finder.plist.XXXXXX (with random capital letters where the Xs are).

That seemed fishy to me, so I compressed both plists into an "archive" (just in case I was wrong) and deleted the uncompressed versions.

Then I restarted my computer so it could make a new .plist to replace the one(s) I trashed. Out of curiosity, I also went back into the Library to see if I had TWO new .plist files and of course there was only one—as I suspected should be the case. How did the other one get in there? Hack? Virus? Glitch? I don't know. Anyway, I trashed the archive to get rid of it and my mail search function is running normally now.

Hope this helps!

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

Zapping the Eprom worked for me: alt, command, P and R held down while rebooting. Good Luck !

I rebuild, did try many workaround, nothing worked.

I did reboot, and it worked. not sure what fixed that issue.

Create a new user account and configure the mail account once again , rebuilding , reindexing some will advice .

This worked for me:

https://robservatory.com/a-possible-fix-broken-search-in-macos-mail/

Lighten up. The spotlight index is used for searching in Mail.

I have the same issue, Rebuilding and Reindexing its working.

Mail 11.2 on High Sierra 10.13.3

If there are issues in finder click on apple logo > force quit , select finder and relaunch .

Also enter in user library macOS Sierra: Library folder

Find a folder preferences drag and drop com.apple.finder.plist to the desktop , restart the machine .

See this article Search for emails in Mail on your Mac - Apple Support