So I am going through the transition pains of switching to Lion. One thing that irks me right now is search in mail is terrible. Comparing side by side my RMBP running latest updates of Lion against my prev gen MBP running latests update of Snow Leopard. I search for an email, something generic as I want to see all from "company A". In Lion, I type in Snow Leopard I get 5 hits. Now in Snow Leopard, I type the same, and both are searching the entire account in box, I get 24 hits, different email accounts, but all from "company A"

Seeing this, I thought maybe some emails did not get transferred over, but each and everyone I can find by their date, so they are there, just not coming up in search. Anyone else have this? Or is this something glitchy on my end?

Have Spotlight reindex your hard drive. That should resolve any searching issues.

To me, the Lion version of Mail is head and shoulders better than the previous version, primarily because of the enhanced searching ability. It still has its quirks, but I like its ability to create search tokens, select which mailbox you want to search in, etc.

Try the Spotlight reindexing to see whether that helps.

I think it's Spotlight in Lion in general that stinks. I've searched for terms, opened the documents they are supposed to be in and gotten nothing. Or it'll return something like 'mbox' as a possible hit (useless).

Mail however is the one program I've actually noticed an improvement with in Lion... I've had persistent mailbox crashes, hang and nonsense since Tiger and the new mail client finally solved those.

To me, the Lion version of Mail is head and shoulders better than the previous version, primarily because of the enhanced searching ability. It still has its quirks, but I like its ability to create search tokens, select which mailbox you want to search in, etc.

Try the Spotlight reindexing to see whether that helps.

same. mail was probably my favourite part of lion when i fist got my hands on the dev preview. LOVED it

I've used Apple's Mail since day one and always liked it. When Lion came out and made my MBP look like my iPhone or iPad, I wanted to change email programs, but then discovered the 'traditional' option was still available and continue to use it in that mode. I also shut off 'conversations' as I hate having a long string of mails auto wrapped together. If Apple ever removes the traditional and conversation modes, I would abandon Mail in a heartbeat and find something that doesn't force my MBP to look like my iPhone or iPad. I can barely stand to use the mail on either and if I had to file 50,000 plus emails with that system, it would be torture.

I've used Apple's Mail since day one and always liked it. When Lion came out and made my MBP look like my iPhone or iPad, I wanted to change email programs, but then discovered the 'traditional' option was still available and continue to use it in that mode. I also shut off 'conversations' as I hate having a long string of mails auto wrapped together. If Apple ever removes the traditional and conversation modes, I would abandon Mail in a heartbeat and find something that doesn't force my MBP to look like my iPhone or iPad. I can barely stand to use the mail on either and if I had to file 50,000 plus emails with that system, it would be torture.

I did the same, switched to the traditional settings. I did find I needed to click a few extra buttons for it to show all that I wanted in search. I thought it should just be as easy as typing in the company name and getting everything from them, should not matter if its john@companya or henry@companya, anything with company a should by default show. It does, just takes a few extra clicks to make happen.

Now if only I could get spaces back :)

Now if only I could get spaces back :)[/QUOTE]

Spaces actually never went away. Mission Control has the same functionality but you have to set it up. First create as many desktops that best suit you as you would have with spaces. Assign the apps you want into those desktops. Right click or control + click on the application icon, navigate to options and then "assign to this desktop." Once you have everything the way you like it, open system preferences and under "Mission Control," uncheck the "automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use" option.

Even in Lion, I find the search function to be... shall we say, "iffy"? But then, I was a hardcore Eudora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)) user, which was the king of email search. What a shame that Infinity Data Systems (http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/forums/) has so totally messed up the development of a Eudora clone...

.

Even in Lion, I find the search function to be... shall we say, "iffy"? But then, I was a hardcore Eudora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)) user, which was the king of email search. What a shame that Infinity Data Systems (http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/forums/) has so totally messed up the development of a Eudora clone...

A big +1!!

I seldom use Lion and had to resort to opening my Eudora in SL today just to locate some two year old emails, and within a second or two, there they were and even with simple easy access to the appropriate mailbox.

And so much for my money I spent for the later Eudora developments support including PostBox and MailForge etc. that still haven't come anywhere close.

Why would anyone do this? The new mail is SO much more functional and user-friendly. It just makes sense, especially if you go under "view" and "show mailbox list". It is just fantastic.

I'm glad you think so.
On both of the Macs in my family that run Lion, both users immediately complained bitterly about the way mail was set up and I had to switch to traditional view in each case.

Spaces actually never went away. Mission Control has the same functionality but you have to set it up. First create as many desktops that best suit you as you would have with spaces. Assign the apps you want into those desktops. Right click or control + click on the application icon, navigate to options and then "assign to this desktop." Once you have everything the way you like it, open system preferences and under "Mission Control," uncheck the "automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use" option.

Perhaps, but in Spaces, you could arrange your screens in a 3x3 Brady Bunch grid which I found very handy, plus you never had to worry about Space 5 swapping spots with Space 2 behind your back, for example.