Spotlight, please don’t show mail, but still let me search in Mail app

emailmail.appsearchspotlight

When I search for stuff, even constraining with name:whatIwant, the majority of results are old e-mail messages and Safari history items.

How can I get rid of these results, but still search my email from within the Mail program? I have already added the History folder from Safari to the Privacy tab and put the Mail app in there too, but the results still show.

I am using Mountain Lion at the moment.

EDIT: It turns out I already had Messages and Web history un-selected in my Search Results tab (see second screengrab below), but I am still seeing the results from Web pages and from current (not just archived) Mail messages.

My Spotlight privacy tab:

spotlight privacy

My Spotlight check boxes…

Checkboxes

Some results from my search window:

Search results

Best Answer

I have struggled with this also (telling spotlight NOT to search in mail etc.)... The best solution for me so far has been to get in the habit of writing:

-kind:mail

at the end of every search I make in spotlight.

I will admit this isn't a GREAT solution - but it works (and you could probably set a keyboard shortcut to type it for you if you wanted).

Turn off spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Unload it:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Load It:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Turn on spotlight again:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Now everything is being reindexed as expected.

In newer versions of macOS, just turning indexing off then back on again resolves the issue.

Why doesn’t iPhoto show up in Spotlight search results

Try rebuild index

From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
Click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking
it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
Close Spotlight preferences.
Spotlight will re-index the contents of the folder or volume.

You can also use the command line to rebuild Spotlight’s index.
Open the Terminal application and enter the following command:

sudo mdutil -E /

Authenticate with your administrator password,
and a message appears indicating that the index will be rebuilt.
Spotlight rebuilds the index of your hard disk.
You can track the rebuilding progress by clicking the Spotlight menu.