Re-index Mail? Search not working?

[shinsundo]

Has anyone else found their existing messages unsearchable within Mail?

Strangely, Spotlight finds the correct messages yet Mail does not.

Anyone know anything about this or how to force Mail to re-index?

Or am I "doing it wrong?" Under 10.6 typing a term in Mail's search field and clicking the directory option to limit the search to that directory worked. Under 10.7 it doesn't leading me to believe it's a bug.

Thanks!

 

[fm2503]

It may have failed to build the index properly when the format was upgraded. Select the mailbox/folder in the left hand pane, then do Mailbox -> Rebuild

Worked for me, anyway.

 

[shinsundo]

Thank you! I'll try this...

 

[bwkbwk]

Same sort of problem. Not finding some messages when searching on newly installed Mail on iMac running Lion. Spotlight sees but Mail doesn't. Exact same setup on Macbook with Lion is finding messages. Tried rebuilding mailboxes but hasn't worked yet.

 

[bwkbwk]

UPDATE: rebuilding did eventually seem to to work - maybe took a while to work through

 

[meagain]

It may have failed to build the index properly when the format was upgraded. Select the mailbox/folder in the left hand pane, then do Mailbox -> Rebuild

Worked for me, anyway.

I can't find this for the life of me. Are you saying right click on the mailbox in question?

 

[fm2503]

I can't find this for the life of me. Are you saying right click on the mailbox in question?

Select the mailbox with a single click in the left hand frame.
Then from the Mailbox Menu select rebuild (it's the last entry in the menu). So it's not a context menu thing.

 

[meagain]

Wow. Sometimes I scare myself. Thanks so much for explaining this to me. It's rebuilding now.