Mail search on iPhone not sorting by date

OMG, the latest iOS update might have changed something and I have found a way to get things sorted. When you do a search for emails where there are years of them, you now get an initial result that has a disclaimer at the bottom saying that “Some results may not appear. Mail downloads and organizes messages when iPad is locked, charging and connected to WiFi. Large accounts like this may take longer.” The search result pulls more old emails and they appear in different order as more are found, putting the newest lower in the result, as before, and you can’t find what you are looking for. BUT if you give it a bit of time and then change the search at the top from “From” to “To” and then back again to “From” the messages now appear in order from newest to oldest! The number of messages that you have from the sender is why people have said that different things work in the past - They must have been searching accounts that are smaller. I’ve tried this toggling now a few times and it has worked every time!

After struggling with this for months, I found a possible fix. After trying all the fixes in the replies, what worked for me was going to Settings for the Mail app and turning OFF the Summarize Message Previews option. My search results are now in date order.

I toggled ‘most recent message on top’ to off and back to on and it fixed it immediately . Had been unusable for weeks. Thanks to whoever suggested this

I don’t have a fix, but seem to have found an improvement.

1. In Mail, view any or all mailboxes.
2. Tap the “…” menu (at upper-right of screen).
3. Disable “Show Contact Photos”.
4. Search for something.

After doing the above, my search results improved. Unfortunately, I still don’t get consistent results:

• Most often (thankfully), search results appear in the expected, proper date order.
• Sometimes, search results appear with one or just a few old emails at the top of an otherwise properly sorted list.
• Rarely, search results appear as before, with most-recent results appearing far down the list, if at all.

You may experience other outcomes.

Workaround 1: Sometimes, when searching a single mailbox, tapping “All Mailboxes” then “Current Mailbox” yields a correct sort.

Workaround 2: Sometimes, when searching all mailboxes, tapping “Current mailbox” then “All Mailboxes” yields a correct sort.

Workaround 3: Sometimes, searching for a different term, then repeating the desired search yields a correct sort.

Workaround 4: Sometimes, closing search then repeating the search yields a correct sort.

I have not found a workaround that always works. I have an iPhone Pro Max running iOS 18.5.

This problem seems to happen with every update. I find a fix and then it reverts back to message searches shown in scrambled date order after every update.

Fixed this time by turning off “Follow Up Suggestions” in Mail Settings and then restarting Mail

When I toggled the “Most recent on top” button, closes the app, reopened and tried the search again, it worked. Try toggling the button even if it’s already on green. Hope it works.

I posted earlier, after the older results pop up and mix up the order, toggle the search from “from” to “to” and then back again and the results will come up in order newest to oldest.

Flipping “most recent on top” off/on worked for me too. Thanks!

None of the “fixes” posted here worked for me. After 6 months of racing to find my search results before the older results from over 10 years ago replaced them; I got tired of waiting for Apple to fix this problem. I installed the “Gmail” app on my iPhone and the search results were correct with that app, so I removed my Gmail account from my Apple Mail app and selected Gmail as my default email client from my Apple Mail accounts. (We will see if this causes new headaches)

Please note: I thought many of the “fixes” in this thread worked, at first. However, my huge 15GB Gmail account would eventually revert back to this behavior if I waited a while.

I found by using the 3 dots top left of mailbox on iPhone choosing LIST puts the mail in proper sequence. Also in settings turn on ‘most recent update on top’.

fixed with update to iOS 18.4 for me

This is so frustrating. But when I turned the sort by recent off/on it temporarily fixed part of the problem.

the sort by subject started to sort by recent. But searching for a name did not.

Then the next day the sort by subject was again backwards. But every time I switch it off/on it temporarily works.

I THINK this might have just gotten fixed….updated to 18.4 and at least the first few searches now seem to work correctly. Hoping im right, and thanks to whatever engineer helped out!

So I called Apple Support on this and there isn’t a fix at this time. They escalated the problem to the engineering team and a fix should hopefully be out soon. She said probably in the form of an operating system update. Fingers crossed it comes out soon.

1. [UPDATE] My improvement involved disabling “Show Contact Photos”. However, as described, it only disabled the setting temporarily. After I closed Mail and checked Settings, I found that “Show Contact Photos” was still enabled. Regardless (!), search in Mail was still improved to the same degree as before. I cannot explain this but have done enough corporate system management and programming to know that’s hardly important. I’ll take the fix whether I can explain it or not. BTW, I turned off “Show Contact Photos” in the Setting app because I loath them. Mail search still seems improved. Best wishes on your outcome.