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Search function in Apple Mail no longer works.

I've tried all the suggested fixes from another discussion thread, including turning off Spotlight for Mail, rebooting, and turning it back on, but without success. I've also attempted using terminal commands, and deleting the index files, but still no luck. The search functions work seamlessly on my iPhone with the same account setup, but not on my iMac. I don’t have the time to rebuild my Mac, and I'm not even sure that would resolve the issue. Any other ideas? Setup: iMac 27-inch, 3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, 40GB RAM, running Sequoia v15.0.1 (24A348) and Apple Mail v16.0 (3818.100.11.1.3).

Posted on Oct 16, 2024 10:32 AM

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1 reply

Oct 16, 2024 7:01 PM in response to Vexall

This was taken from TCoSolvingMacProblems. by Joe Kissel

If it works I don't want a upvote.


If that happens, try each of these steps in order until the problem goes away: 

1. Make sure that neither the folder ~/Library/Mail nor any of its parent folders is in Spotlight’s Privacy list (Ventura or later: System Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy; Big Sur or Monterey: System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy). 

2. You may have mailboxes whose contents have not yet been downloaded to your Mac. To ensure that they have been, choose Mail > Mailbox > Synchronize > “Account Name” (which may take some time). 

3. Force Mail to rebuild its envelope index—that is, its internal metadata index: 

a. Quit Mail. 

b. In the Finder, navigate to ~/Library/Mail/Vx/MailData, where Vx varies by operating system (Ventura or later: V10, Monterey: V9; Big Sur: V8). 

c. Drag the files Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal to the Trash. 

d. Open Mail again. It will say you need to “import” all your messages again, which is Mail’s way of saying it needs to rebuild its index. This process should take only a few minutes. 

4. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities) and enter this command, followed by Return, to re-import your Mail messages into the Spotlight index: 


mdimport -r/System/Library/Spotlight/Mail.mdimporter 


Search function in Apple Mail no longer works.

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