[MacNNblueberry]

Am I missing something?

If I do a Mail.app search for "bunnies" nothing comes up if I am looking in "Entire Message", but if I click [search in] "Subject" then it finds the emails with "bunnies" in the subject. In fact it seems typing any word into the Mail.app search box when "Entire Message" is selected brings me nothing. I try "to" I try "the"... nothing! Two things... is my "entire message" part messed up? Second, shouldn't "entire message" mean, oh I don't know... like anything in the entire message? Including what's in the subject?

Also, if I try to drag my hard drive into the Privacy section of the Spotlight control panel, it gives me the little green "+" icon as if it's going to add it, but then the hard drive doesn't get added. It won't add if I select via the "+" command in the Spotlight control panel either. Though if I plug in my external drive the icon for that drive (which I had denoted previously to be private) does show up.

Curiouser and curiouser...

[chrisford]

Hi -

I have exactly the same problem: Mail refuses to return *any* results if I choose to search the entire message.

Getting annoying

Chris

[CatOne]

Hmmm... so is spotlight working on your boot drive, or not? If you have spotlight disabled on your drive, then mail searches in the body of the message will NOT work. Because Spotlight is necessary for that. My understanding is that searches in mail *will* work on header files without Spotlight enabled.

[chrisford]

Originally Posted by CatOne

Hmmm... so is spotlight working on your boot drive, or not? If you have spotlight disabled on your drive, then mail searches in the body of the message will NOT work...

[Edit!]

I've just Google'd some more and found that - for me at least - rebuilding the Mailbox that was affected has fixed the problem (the Rebuild option is in the Mailbox menu).

I hope this helps and thanks again CatOne.

Chris


[Previous message]
Hi CatOne -

I double-checked my settings: Spotlight is on and running ok. I had excluded my Library from Spotlight's indexing previously: thinking this might be part of the problem, I've now included it again. However, Mail still doesn't return any results if I search the Entire Message. Very odd!

Thanks for your help!

Chris

[MacNNblueberry]

I have Spotlight enabled on my boot drive, yet if I want to try to have my Mac force Spotlight to re-index (thinking that maybe that was the problem), I can't drag my boot drive into the privacy window (clearing the Spotlight index) and then drag it back out (forcing Spotlight to re-index the drive).

As far as the Rebuild command goes in Mail.app, when I pull down the Mailbox menu the Rebuild command is greyed out. Any ideas how I can Rebuild?

[chrisford]

Originally Posted by MacNNblueberry

...As far as the Rebuild command goes in Mail.app, when I pull down the Mailbox menu the Rebuild command is greyed out. Any ideas how I can Rebuild?

Hi mate -

Just to check: you have the Inbox selected when you try and select Rebuild? If you have, then I'm not sure what the problem is, I'm afraid. Perhaps someone else can help?

Chris

[MacNNblueberry]

I found the problem, I had my Inbox selected when I was trying it, but what I had to do was click the triangle next to it to show my three separate email accounts. Then I click on one of those and I can rebuild.

[MacNNblueberry]

Just to be clear, while I was able to "rebuild" my mailboxes, that didn't seem to fix the problem I am having with the searching of my emails. Still not able to get any results when searching "Entire message".

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by MacNNblueberry

Just to be clear, while I was able to "rebuild" my mailboxes, that didn't seem to fix the problem I am having with the searching of my emails. Still not able to get any results when searching "Entire message".

If you want to rebuild the Spotlight index on your boot drive, do othis:

sudo mdutil -E /

That will erase the spotlight index, and it will automatically be rebuilt from scratch, on your boot drive.

Be sure, in Spotlight preferences, that your boot drive is not listed in the privacy pane.

[MacNNblueberry]

you mean via the Terminal app right?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by MacNNblueberry

you mean via the Terminal app right?

Of course. From the command line.