Search All Message Does Not Include Trash

I'm sorry it's not as expected, but it's not a bug. As described here the “All Messages” folder contains all messages which are not located in a mailbox assigned for deleted messages or junk. I know the name can be a bit misleading. (I can assure you that if it did include trash/junk by default then I would also get complaints about that being unexpected behavior.)

Note that searching just automatically selects “All Messages”. You can always select the “Deleted Messages” mailbox to change the focus of the search or you can hold down ⌘ when doing this to search both mailboxes.

You can also do like this:

• Create a new smart mailbox.
• Define it to include All Messages and Deleted Messages (and maybe Junk).
• Look for the popup menu when the toolbar search field is active and select the new mailbox in the “Default Mailbox” submenu.

Hmmm... This tripped me up as well. My experience with other mail clients in the past is that "All messages" would really mean all messages... Anyway, even just a snippet in the documentation about this would be helpful — I had to come here to find out why this was happening. Thanks.

I agree, the mailbox name is messy - hard to know if it means all minus junk and deleted or all with junk and deleted. Can you use + and - in mailbox names? You could have All+Junk+Deleted or All-Junk-Deleted to clarify?

Rejoining this thread ...

The word 'all' is a common English word.
It means : 'the whole quantity or extent of a particular thing without exclusion'

So - 'all mail' means every mail - with no exclusions.

So - 'all mail' is not the same as 'all mail except trash and junk'

I suspect that most speakers of English would expect 'all mail' to include every mail in every mailbox being managed by MailMate.

I wouldn't be promoting GMail as an example of good design.

Much better IMHO to provide a preference setting to include/exclude Junk/Trash from searching 'all mail'.
Even Apple Mail managed to get this right.