OS X Mavericks :: Spotlight And Finder Search Isn't Working Fully?
Jun 25, 2014
Since the latest upgrade of 10.9.3 my and other office computers have problems with searches using spotlight and Finder search on internal, external and networked volumes. This is a big roadblock to our office workflow. Reindexing doesn't fix the issue and we can see clearly that the files we are searching for are there.
My MBP 17 (2.6 GHz, model 4.1) with  128 SSD isn't finding files which are definitely on my drive. Seem to only find files on the desktop, but not in sub folders for some reason. Any ideas why? Is it the SSD thats not indexing properly? How can I reset or fix this. Its becoming annoying
I have tried everything to fix Spotlight search with no luck. I have deleted the index file in the root directory with out success. and tried several other ways of tring to re index my machine. As you can see from my screen shots. There is a file called Apps on the desktop. Yest when I search the desktop it cant find it.
I have a number of Mac's (all running Mavericks), connecting to a shared folder on a Mac we use as a 'server' (it doesn't run server software though, just Snow Leopard client).Â
Does Mavericks Mac's use the 'spotlight index' of this shared, networked, Snow Leopard Mac, or when we search it, it's just searching the actual file structure?Â
I'm having issues with searching this networked Mac (some files not being found and then a on later search they appear), and I don't know whether a rebuilding of the spotlight index on the networked Mac is a relevant troubleshooting step.Â
I am having a problem where my mail App is not searching the entire body of the message any more. I installed Lion soon after it was released, and I believe that it has been working up until recently.Â
If I do a search, it won't search the message body, and gives me no option to search for "Message contains" (just "People" and "Subjects"). If search for subject "foo" and then click on the "Subject" pull down menu, it shows "Subject" and "Entire Message", but "Entire Message" is greyed out.Â
I've done a lot of web searching and most people with similar problems had problems with Spotlight. If I do a Spotlight search, it does find all of the mail messages correctly. Its just the Mail app that won't let me search.Â
I haven't tried re-indexing spotlight yet because spotlight seems to be working okay. Note that all of my mail accounts are "POP" accounts with the mail stored locally on my machine.Â
Example: when I type 'wireless info' into Spotlight on my computer the document 'wireless info' is the 29th search result listed. The top hit is a mail message named 'Re: Re: Reset the device, and new wireless info'. The other 27 items in the list above the document I was looking for are things like 'Introducing Portland.doc' and 'Les Amis B&B'.Â
Info: MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
I got a new Macbook today, and installed the Mac OS X 10.5.6. It stalled so I shut down, and when I logged in again Finder and Spotlight doesn't work. Though my hard drive says is labelled Mac HD: Mac OS X 10.5.6 , I am continuously prompted that Spotlight closed unexpectedly. And when I try to reinstall the Mac OS X, the DVD no longer appears on the desktop and Finder too, cannot be opened for me to locate the DVD.
I'm using Finder to search for files on a server connected to my computer at work. The search results I am getting do not include all the files that meet my search criteria. For example, I am looking through photo files for any files with "34" in the name. Some files show up, but not all of them. See screenshot. I am searching in the "Branded Photoshoot" folder, and I am getting some results (Branded Photoshoot/Hilton Universal/IMG_1434), but another file that is in folder, though a different subfolder, (Branded Photoshoot/Architectural Center/IMG_1534) is NOT showing up. What is causing that subfolder and its files to not be included in the search results?
I have spotlight configured to not index the folder ~/Development, because it contains a lot of jars and I couldn't figure out how to turn off indexing of jars.Â
1) I open finder to ~/Development/Foobar, which is a folder containing other folders containing files ending in ".png".
2) I go to the search field in the toolbar and type "png", switch the search mode to "File Name", but nothing is found.Â
It looks like Finder's search function is completely broken if the folder being searched is not indexed by spotlight. Finder should search without the indexes instead, or the search field should be disabled if it is broken.Â
Is there an way to search a folder that is being excluded from spotlight indexing? How do I prevent spotlight from indexing the contents of jar files?
I work everyday with my 21.5' iMac and it had OS Lion before I updated to Mavericks last month. As I work with lots of files, I have also a 1TB Lacie external drive pluged into it via firewire and I constantly access these files. After I updated though, I'm experiencing a strange problem. Everytime I search for a file on Finder, all the results that come up can't be edited or even selected. This is driving me crazy because I must open another tab and go all the way through the file I want as I can't select any file from the searches. All the search results come up written in gray color and with a empty circle on its left side. I can't even click on them! For better explanation, here is a picture of what happens:
Before the update, I used to normally access every result the search came up to.
I have another iMac here in the network with Mavericks too and all the searches returns with selectable and editable results.
I have an external HD full of music and whenever I want to play one, I just search for it in finder and drag&drop it to iTunes. However, I'm having issues with it on my new MacBook Air. Whenever I search the drive for files, they appear normally, but I can't drag them! Highlighing works OK, so does double-clicking or cmd+O, but I can't move them to a playlist. It's the same with any files, not just .mp3s - they cannot be dragged out of the finder window. Scrolling is also wonky, but moving between files using arrows works fine.Â
note that this works perfectly fine when searching the computer's HD. Â
Is this a glitch of some sort, or is the computer preventing me from doing it for some reason? I'm running 10.9.3 with all the updates; the HD is a 1TB Transcend, ExFAT formatted.Â
How can I get Preview to only initiate a search after I have fully typed in the word or phrase.It immediately jumps into a search when I have not fully typed in the word I am searching on. This bogs down the search and stalls my ability to type the phrase into the search box.Â
My finder is not working in the dock with one click have to click and then go to find just started to do this also safari stopped and I quit safari and it started to work again.
I restarted my computer several times no difference.
I'm searching for a file in Finder. When I select "Preferences", which is the directory I'm in, it finds the file but when I select "This Mac" it doesn't.
I am pretty new with Mac and I am trying out my new macbook pro. I'm trying to get to know it. And a while ago I was trying the Spotlight feature. I have a file under User/Library/Preferences/ that is called [URL] I just thought I'd try to search for it on Spotlight if it can find it. I typed myname123 on spotlight but no results were found. Why? Are there any specific strings that should be entered if the search string is between a filename?
Recently the application icons in Spotlight's search window look odd. There's no problem with the search itself, Spotlight hasn't slowed down, the indexing seems ok, in fact the whole system appears to be ok, let aside these odd looking icons.
Logging out or restarting the system works for a while, 3 Spotlight searches to be precisely, the icons are fine for a while, but the fourth search returns every application icon the way it is seen on the screenshots I made.
Is there a way to bring up a 'form' to do a search*, so I can type in, for example, start and/ or end dates for the files I am interested in, or types of files, or a word in a file, or a part of the folder 'tree' its beneath, etc?? I know I can do this in spotlight but then I have to know, remember or lookup all the syntax and get it correct, much too much hassle for infrequent searches.
I'm presuming someone must have come up with a simple app that front ends a potentially complex spotlight query with a form? Or is there even a native facility to do this in OSX?
* Like you can in WinXP for example, not that I'm trolling, its just that it was sooo much easier in XP and I'm hoping I'm missing something obvious :-(
I have a list if 600 servers, and folder full of escalation documentation. What I'm looking for is the easiest way to feed spotlight that list and return a list of documents that contain at least one of those servers. We're moving a datacenter and I want to start figuring out what docs need to be updated.
I noticed that after I use spotlight to launch an app - say Pages for example, Pages launches but Spotlight continues to search for all files with "pages" in the background - slowing down the system. Is there a setting somewhere that will make Spotlight stop searching / clear the search after launching the result?
I'm running Leopard 10.5.6 on a PowerBook G4. I installed Leopard about five days ago, from Tiger. (Possibly relevant: I was evaluating Together when I discovered this problem. Together is an information manager which uses Spotlight for its own indexing.) I don't know if this problem existed before installing Together, since I had only 3-4 days of use and I don't think I tried a Contents search before. (I really don't think it's Together, but it's _something_.)
How to best use the Spotlight and or Command+F find/search feature unsion Lion 10.7? Specifically, I am looking to filter the search to "Name Contains". I know if I Com+F, I can apply that filter with a couple more clicks. And Spotlight can initiate the search. The problem with this method is Show All in Finder leaves no way to apply the Name Contains filter unless I go back and edit the results, then I can drop down and select the filter.
Searching for anything in Spotlight returns no results. Trying to re-initiate indexing by setting the hard-drive to "private" and then "non-private" is not allowed. Using mdutil to force recreate an index fails. "No Index."Â
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I am running on Mail 3.6 on OS X 10.5.8. When I archive a mailbox, it is saved as a text file that opens in TextEdit. I have all of my archived mailboxes in one folder. However, if I try to search for a word in that folder using Spotlight, nothing comes up. It seems that Spotlight does not recognize these files. How can I do a search of archived mailboxes?
Why does Spotlight not search your system directories/files when performing a search? Does it only search within the current user's directories? Is there anyway you can make it do a more thorough search?
I did a Spotlight search for one of my songs that I have written and have files in both Logic - song itself I recorded and a document in Pages of the lyrics. But some of the other 48 items that came up were very strange...including this HTML document to a script that I have no clue of where it came from. I have never done a search for this and don't know how it got asscociated with my song. Anyone else have any weird things show up when doing a spotlight search? PS Upon reading the script I just realized it is from Hitchcock's Rear Window, one of my all time favorite Hitch movies, but I never viewed this or saved it onto my hard drive.
Spotlight Crashes when Search Something (SystemUIServer Crashes Actually). Yesterday, I installed 10.6.4 from Updater. After everything is OK, I realized that problem. When I tried to seach something from Spotlight, I got the list without icons and after 2-3 seconds, menu closed and SystemUIServer restarts. Those are the reports from Console. First I tried with Guest Account - Same Problem I created new acount-First Search, No Problem, Others have Same Problem (Thats User Account) I created 3rd and 4th account-Same Problem (Those are Admin Account)
There aren't any file named "com.apple.spotlight.plist" in my account. I deleted "com.apple.systemuiserver.plist" and restarted computer. Same Problem. What I realized after, There aren't any file named "com.apple.spotlight.plist" in all accounts, even they are admin or normal account. (Guest,2nd,3rd,4th and My Account). There are systemuiserver files in all accounts. Its looks like I have problem with system wide. I verified and repaired Disk. with System DVD. I verified and fix Permissions. with System DVD and Onyx Application. I installed 10.6.4 again and restarted again. No file named com.apple.spotlight.plist.
I have not seen anyone address the following problem. Nevertheless, it absolutely annoys me, and I wonder if anyone knows how to fix it. Sometimes, when I press the normal COMMAND+SHIFT key sequence to use Spotlight, the Spotlight search field will drop down lower on the screen. It will still be on the correct side, but it will drop down near the middle of the screen. In other words, the Spotlight search field will not be attached to the menu bar in the upper-right corner (next to the clock and the day of the week) where it normally appears. However, during those instances, it will pop back into place if I do one of two things: 1) start typing into the Spotlight field anyway or 2) Change my resolution to 1680x1050. This really annoys me when it happens. Does anyone know how to fix this so that it never happens again? It doesn't happen a lot, but I don't want it to happen again, and I absolutely love using Spotlight. I'm a Spotlight addict. Also, if there's a fix, can someone tell me anything I can do to Snow Leopard, so that the Spotlight search field never pops out of place again? Sorry, but I'm very much a perfectionist.
Here's a screen shot of how it looks when it happens. I snapped it off the desktop when it happened last time:[URL]