Removing 'Top Hits' in MacOS Mail

When performing a search within macOS Mail, the search results are always preceded by two items at the top which are generally not what one is looking for, although they are labeled by Apple, in its infinite wisdom, as "Top Hits." This can be confusing, because sometimes the Top Hits messages are actually quite old, and there's not much to separate these from the actual search result list sorted in user-defined sequence. It's possible to mistakenly respond to an old message.

There is no way to configure this or to turn it off. But I just discovered a workaround, thanks to a comment made in another thread.

The workaround:

Even if you do not routinely use "Column Layout" in your Mail viewing, click on "Use Column Layout," in the View menu, to do your search. Then click again on "Use Column Layout" to return to your preferred view, and Top Hits will not be there.

For some reason, Apple chose not to inflict the Top Hits concept on Column View users, as they acknowledge here.

There are at least two threads dealing with this issue in various OS versions. I'll link to those here, in case it helps to tie things together.

Remove Top Hits from Mac Mail High Sierra

Removing 'Top Hits' in MacOS Ventura Mail

It was dialabrain's comment in the latter article that pointed me toward this workaround.

Thanks.