Mail search no longer works after Big Sur 11.4 Update

[jwarne1]

I understand this issue has been discussed numerous times since the introduction of Mac Big Sur. I have searched these forums and others, and have yet to find someone who was unable to find a "fix." After upgrading to Big Sur 11.4 yesterday, the search feature for Mail no longer works. I have tried the various "fixes." These include:

1. Closing Mail > opening Mail while holding shift > closing mail > opening Mail while holding shift > restarting computer.

2. Going into ~/Library/Mail/V8/MailData and deleting all the envelope files and restarted my computer.

3. Rebuilding the Mail index.

4. Rebuilding the Spotlight index.

5. Reinstalling Big Sur.

While these things have worked for, it seems, everyone else, they have not worked for me. I'm in the middle of preparing discovery in a civil lawsuit and I can't find emails because Mail either says it found 0 results or it reports every email as responsive. I do not know what else to do. Please help.

Thanks

 

[Geoff777]

I do not know how to fix it but as a workaround could you try searching for the mail from Spotlight?
If you know the sender's email address or the subject line, mail items should show up when you search from Spotlight.
Another workaround is to use MS Outlook which has a great search function (uses Spotlight I think)
Good luck!

 

[Significant1]

rebuilding spotlight and mail index ought to fix it:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

If you get unexpected results when searching your Mac, rebuilding the Spotlight index might help.

support.apple.com

Alternative you could use webmail depending on what mail-account you are using.

If it is imap/exchange where all content is on the server, you could delete the account and create it again, but I actual think that is what rebuilding mail is doing.