How do I get the search facility on mail to work. It ceased working in the last two weeks. When I put in a search term for all inboxes the emails disappear from sight .I have reinstalled Big Sur and deleted half my emails leaving approximately 5000. I have a 2014, 27inch iMac which to date has worked perfectly.
iMac
Thanks for letting us know, JT0142,
If you haven't already, we'd suggest that you rebuild your mailboxes if you're unable to search Mail: Rebuild mailboxes in Mail on Mac - Apple Support
"Rebuild mailboxes in Mail on Mac
You may need to rebuild a mailbox to update the list of messages it contains. For example, if messages appear to be missing or garbled, or if you can’t find all relevant messages when you search using the Entire Message search option.
on your Mac, select a mailbox in the sidebar.You can also rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac if you're unable to search in any app: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
We hope this helps you.
Take care!
Hello JT0142,
We want to make sure you can use search on your Mail app on the iMac.
Please try the suggestions in this article that may help to resolve the issue:
If searching doesn’t find the right emails in Mail on Mac
We hope this helps.
Cheers.
Hi JT0142,
Since this issue continues after following the steps we've previously provided, we would advise contacting Apple Support next. They would be the best equipped to look into this issue further. Contact them using this: Contact - Official Apple Support
Best regards.
I have followed the advice given in the Mail User Guide. I regret that the Mac still will not search for emails. It has been suggested to me by an Apple "expert" that my Mac is too old (early 2014) to support the current Mail/Big Sur operating system software and the only option is to buy a new machine. I am wary of buying a new machine based solely on this expert's advice particularly as at no stage has Apple advised me of insurmountable problems involved with owning an old Mac.
I regret your solution has not worked. I have attempted to rebuild my main mailbox but nothing happened ( there was no evidence of the Mac responding to the rebuild request)
mail search not working
