Applications :: Cannot Find Any Notes With Spotlight?
Nov 10, 2009
Just started using notes in mail.app to keep track of daily items that I used to write down in a notebook. Today, needed to spotlight a note and found that I can't find any notes with spotlight. Missing something?
If I hit command-space and begin typing something in Spotlight, then go to Safari 4 and hit command-F, the search box is prefilled with whatever I typed in Spotlight. I don't know if this is the intended behavior or not, but I don't recall it happening in Safari 3.
Whenever I'm in a folder which has pdf documents inside and a search a word in the search field in the finder the results are a total mess. It sometimes finds the words inside the pdfs and sometimes it doesn't. What is worse is that whenever I open a pdf with preview, it almost NEVER finds the word I'm looking. It just shows the loading sign and never return results.
I went to search for "ColorSync" in Spotlight but it wasn't able to pull up the folder. It exists though @ Macintosh HD > Users > Chris > Library > ColorSync
I have several LaCie external drives connected to my iMac (OS 10.6.4). Spotlight fails to find things on these drives, particularly folders, even though they are not excluded (private) in Spotlight Preferences. I once had this problem and was instructed to force an indexing. However I have forgotten how to do that.
I recently lost some bookmarks in firefox. I know these are stored somewhere with the filename bookmarks.html so I searched with spotlight to locate it
It brings up no results - I have 2 HD's but have it set on 'search my mac' which is both of them.
I can locate the file myself through users>library>application support etc but is there a reason spotlight can't find it? I have my preferences set to show everything.
Spotlight keeps freezing and beachballing when I try to search anything. It may have something to do with yesterday when I killed the mdworker process in terminal because it was eating up too much cpu. Spotlight doesnt find anything besides dictionary definitions, but it does it really slowly with lots of freezes and beachballs
Ok, so for the past few weeks spotlight has not been working. It would not find things that I had recently put on my system. So I fiddled around with it by doing this: sh-3.2# mdutil -E / /: No index.
It shot me a no index error. I kept trying different things including deleting the index file through the Finder. I finally turned off spotlight with mdutil -i off /. I restarted and tried to turn it back on and it would give me this error: sh-3.2# mdutil -i on / /: Error: unable to perform operation. (-100) No index.
Then I did rm /.Spotlight-V100 and deleted the spotlight index and restarted. Now it searches for files and it has all the files in the index, but it no longer does calculator or dictionary searches. Using mdutil -E / returns this: sh-3.2# mdutil -E / /: No index. mdutil -s / returns this: sh-3.2# mdutil -s / /: No index.
But I can still use spotlight to find files. Typing something into the menubar gives back accurate results without calculator or dictionary results. So what do I do to fix it without a reinstall of 10.5? This is my 2.4 ghz Santa Rosa Macbook Pro. The drive is 160 GB.
I noticed my "spotlight" icon has a pulsing dot in the center of the magnifying glass icon....when I click on it there is a progress bar and it is perpetually "indexing" my hard drive.
Whats this mean? Is my HDD going to fail? Its been going on like this for months. Running Drive Utility, Techtool or Disk Warrior doesn't fix it.
I fixed permissions and repaired the disk off the Snow Leopard book disk, problem persists.
I just got the new MBP recently. Everything works fine. Just a bit curious. When I try to find some file in finder, the files in ~/library/preferences don't come up.
I'm using OSX Snow Leopard. Spotlight was unable to find a document in a folder. It found several others that have almost the same name, but not the one I was looking for. By scrolling down in the finder window I found it without spotlight right away.
To better explain my problem:
I was looking for a document that was called "Paperless". Spotlight found several document in different folders like "Paperlessone", Paperless2" etc. But not able to find "Paperless"
I checked the Spotlight options and it says, that it is looking for everything.
can anyone suggest an mac os x app (or mac os x-supported software like OpenOffice et cet.) that will allow me to create marginal or anchored notes in a text document?
i am not interested in MS WORD, not out of any ideological dislike of gates or ms word, et cet. (although i do not like word), but i am tired of paying steep prices for it and upgrades and wish a simpler program for someone who writes, period. i do not need 90% of word's features (although it, and openoffice alternative, does have the "insert note" on reviewing toolbar i like - see below)
if anyone is familiar with what is called "critical apparatus", it would allow me to add what are essentially footnotes in a visible (Jer's Novel Writer) or invisible (WORD and OpenOffice) notes to the text. (btw: here is what i mean: [URL] and click on screenshot at bottom right of screen)
such a feature would be immensely helpful for some translation projects i am doing as well "to check" reminders within creative projects, from essays to novels.
i may be wrong but i don't think bookmarks are what i want and i prefer to avoid footnotes or endnotes (yes - i am selfish. i want it all) although a footnote is not so terrible a work-around.
i have looked at following options in respective apps:
postit/stickies type note - openoffice has a WORD type feature (like the critical apparatus popup window in url above) which is accessible but i would love to have a smaller simpler program to do this
marginal notes - i love Jer's Novel Writer for this but if you write a long note or lots of notes anchored to the same small stretch of text, these marginal notes become cumbersome and piled on top of each other in the margin, unless there is a way to do this i am doing wrong. (am open to suggestions how to use JNW better. i have not written to Jer - maybe i'll do this)
flags: supernotecard has flags but limits them to one per card where a card is funtionally synonomous with a paragraph. thus one can not annotate multiple words in same paragraph with individual markers
links: i am using DEVONthink more and more as a word processor with its multiple windows, database/search/concordance capabilities and extremely rewarding flexibility. i could use their links to separate windows but don't like this as much.similarly voodoopad does this well but same objection
separate windows: many programs facilitate a new window that could hold my notes. they are not anchored or easily tied to the text in question without altering the text, e.g., DEVONthink, Smultron, et cet.
i think i have looked at almost everything, i think, e.g., supernotecard, notemind, nova mind, tinderbox, notetaker (which i love), ulysses, avenir, z-writer, scrivener, smultron, textwrangler, subethaedit, mi, copywrite, bean, textmate (a great "project format" for composite documents like journal or book with chapters), mellel, mariner, JNW (which i also love), nisus, tex-edit plus, all the omnigroup apps, journler, storyist, writeroom, abiword, but may have missed something. programs like curio (which i like, along with omnigrapple pro) and mindburn are not really what i need either.
i guess if i knew enough i could write an applescript within some of these programs. but i am not very facile with scripting and do not want to take the time to become so. i do not think TeX et al. are the way to go and the same comment about time versus learning curve applies.
I have a very odd problem. Spotlight can't find TextEdit anymore, even if I type the name of the app fully in the field. The app is right where it should be in the Applications folder. It hasn't been excluded from search and I have done a reindex of Spotlight but the problem persists. Other apps come up exactly right.
how to find the path to a file in a Spotlight search result. In Snow Leopard I would get the path to a file or folder by just holding the mouse over the search result in Spotlight. I don't see that in Lion.
When I have an item listed in a Spotlight search that is in a folder I'm actually looking for, how do I figure out where the folder is located? I often remember a document or app and want to add something to the same folder, but can't find it-- Spotlight does not give the path that I can see.
I can type a search word into Spotlight. It will show results. I then open let's say an Appleworks text document from that search. Then I close that document and retry the same search: Now that same document will not show up in the search results for that exact word and it WILL NEVER show up again in search results. In other words after a file has been found and opened in search once , it will never appear in search results again for the same word.
I�m creating an application that focus on organizing notes and projects, and syncing them between Mac, iPhone and iPad So I would like to know your opinion about what would you like to see on an application like this. Some new features you haven�t seen anywhere.
Can anyone tell me if there is a good notes application that lets me organise notes into categories/projects/folders. I am looking for something that has both a mac and an iphone version and will sync multiple macs and iPhone over the web using mobile me for example.
I'm not looking for a task manager - I'm already using omnifocus for that and in an ideal world I am looking for something very similar to omnifocus but that is notes based rather than task based.
I'm not looking for a files/documents depository either - I use Evernote for that.
Just need simple text notes..
Edit - I have found Soho Notes which basically does what I want, (mac client, iphone client, notes in folders, mobile me sync) but I find the interface a bit cheesy with all those icons...ideally looking for something a bit more minimalist - I like the look of Mori and Mark/space Notebook but they don't have iphone versions...
Edit2 - Having looked further into Soho Notes, there seems to be a lot of complaints about the syncing and corrupt databases...I have also looked at MacJournal which is along the lines of what I'm after but again quite a lot people having problems with the sync by the sound of it so still looking...
My school provides students with PDF versions of the powerpoint slides that the professors use in lecture. Many students print them out and take notes on them, a system which I dislike because that wastes paper, and I like to keep my notes organized on my computer. I currently take notes using Microsoft Word's notebooks which is okay, but I end up rewriting things that are on the slides. Sorry for the long winded intro, but my question is are there any programs available that would allow for the addition of texts to the PDFs. I know how to do it with Adobe Software, but I was hoping that someone could clue me into a simpler solution for in-class note taking. Adobe's programs are all have more features than I need on a daily basis, I would like a program simpler and more streamlined.
So i take most of my notes using powerpoint... and I'd like to be able to record audio as well. The problem is that in powerpoint, the record features are horrible. You can record a presentation, but while doing so you cant edit the powerpoint document...and the audio drops out.
Any students or professionals out there who have a good solution to this?
I'd love it if i could easily just record audio for each slide, and take notes at the same times, but this seems to not be easy in powerpoint.
On my laptop, in Mail, I have two folders under each reminders (notes and todos) called "on my mac" and "mobileme". On my imac, I only have the one folder (just named notes and todos). When I add a note from the imac, I get it on the laptop. When I add something from the laptop, it goes into the mobileme folder and the imac can't see it. I have notes set to sync automatically with mobileme on both machines. I want to eliminate the extra folders on the laptop (like the imac) and sync both folders automatically.
Boom Recorder states that it won't work on SL so... I out of luck.I know I could just type down the lecture but I would like to record at the same time. Recording Pen that records as you write something on the specialized notebook would be perfect but I am looking for something similar that I can use on my Macbook.
I've used PowerPoint extensively for at least 10 years. I want to view my notes on my MacBook Pro desktop, while hiding them from the audience. I seem to recall seeing this option somewhere, but can't find it. Is anyone familiar with this?
So I've recently migrated back to Mail after a long hiatus and set up my Gmail account with IMAP. I like Mail 3.0, but one bug could be a deal breaker for me:I don't like the notes feature and don't plan to use it. However, there are four mystery notes that keep reappearing in my Reminders. I don't remember creating them, and whenever I delete them they reappear about 5 minutes later. They are all blank and always have the same timestamp, too. I've tried junking them, I've tried deleting the Notes mailbox itself, even deleting it on google's end.