Since upgrading to iOS 18 on my iPhone 14, when searching in Mail, the results are not returning in date order. Emails from 2021 onwards are showing first and then I have to scroll to find the most recent emails, which are then showing in ascending order. Any ideas?
iPhone 13, iOS 18
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!
apple: please pull this feature back or give us the ability to turn it off. Making us live with no email for many months is completely unfair! Give us our email back please, since no one knows how to fix it. Or give us the ability to revert back to a safe version of iOS 17 please.
The problem persists; the immediate search result is in a correct timeline, but when Mail completes the search, the timeline is corrupted and apparently transforms to something that might be a timeline of latest findings.
Referring back to previous mails are an essential part of communicating and referring to a wrong mail could cause severe trouble.
This is a ridiculous and unprofessional error.
I keep hoping every time I get an upgrade the problem will stop. Nope!
it doesn’t matter if it is search by subject or by a name.
At first the sort is correct then it flips itself. Not even always older to newest. Sometimes just mixed up.
APPLE -PLEASE FIX
This is extremely frustrating.
I have multiple mailboxes and it makes searching for a specific email using a keyword really difficult. This affects greatly the effectiveness of my workflow.
The updates should normally make the system work more efficiently and not the other way around.
This has been a known problem with the apple users and I don’t understand why apple is still not reacting?
Where did you find “Summerize Message Previews” button? I’ve searched the Mail Settings but cannot find it anywhere. Can you please post a screenshot of it for those of us who are still searching for relief? Thanks.
Still not working properly with iOS 18.4. I now have recent messages at the top (bonus!), but when I scroll down I have 2023 followed by 2024 and then back to 2023. Perhaps it’s my fault for keeping messages for so long?! Is it just me or is anyone else finding more and more glitches with Apple products?
This is still an issue and I just did the newest upgrade. Every so often the mail does not sort chronologically. It’s really frustrating when you try to respond to someone or find info from latest email and you can’t find it.
Still no fix. I assumed they would fix this by now as it basically makes email useless. I really can't understand why Apple regularly makes design choices that are openly hostile to using their devices productively
This problem persists and Apple does nothing. I clear my email of junk by searching things like "sale". But using a search term no longer works because the results show older emails, which I am saving, first and the ones I need to delete are buried
Hi, same issue. Mail accounts are Office365 hosted, multiple domain names. Devices are iPhone 16 Pro's with iOS 18.4, 18.4.1, 18.5 .
When searching iOS Mail app , results first appear in order but then follow up with more results mixed into the results, and out of order.
Any fix for this yet? Trying to do a search for something extremely specific and it’s pulling up everything but the word ‘decaf’ and showing me unrelated emails from 2021.
Starting to grow tired of Apple having been a user since the iPhone 4s.
Thanks for the suggestion but I already had the same selected and it’s not working for me.
Search is not finding specific emails either 😩
Did you find a fix for this? I have the same problem since getting a new phone with latest version on. It’s really very annoying!
This is still an issue. Has there been an update?
Many thanks Lakerlife! Fixed my issue too.
Mail search on iPhone not sorting by date
