When using icomplete-mode, switch-to-buffer does not always show the complete buffer candidate names in the minibuffer when entering a search pattern. Test case: emacs -q C-x C-f foo.el RET C-x C-f foo.tmp RET C-x b *scratch* RET M-x icomplete-mode RET C-x b oo Now observe that you can see that there are two buffers matching the pattern, but you do not see the names. Now try this instead: C-x b s Now both the *scratch* and *Messages* buffer names are displayed as matches. Thanks! /Mathias In GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.2.9200) of 2013-03-17 on MARVIN Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.2.9200 Configured using: `configure --with-gcc (4.7) --cflags -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libXpm-3.5.8/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libXpm-3.5.8/src -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libpng-dev_1.4.3-1/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/zlib-dev_1.2.5-2/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/giflib-4.1.4-1/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/jpeg-6b-4/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/tiff-3.8.2-1/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/gnutls-3.0.9/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libiconv-1.13.1-1-dev/include -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libxml2-2.7.8/include/libxml2' Important settings: value of $LANG: SVE locale-coding-system: cp1252 default enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: icomplete-mode: t tooltip-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Recent input: C-x C-f f o o . e l C-x C-f f o o . t e m m p C-x b * s M-x i c o m p l C-x b o o C-g Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. (New file) [2 times] Icomplete mode enabled Quit Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort gnus-util mail-extr emacsbug message format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils cus-start cus-load icomplete time-date tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp w32-common-fns disp-table w32-win w32-vars tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process w32 multi-tty emacs)