Spotlight and Finder search

Hi,
What is the difference between the Spotlight search and the Finder Search ? anybody?
Or its spotlight in the finder?
yours sincerely
jagjit

The way I like to define the Spotlight Search function is that it is usually the EASIEST way to find whatever you're looking for on your computer.

Similar Messages

Spotlight and Find search criteria is missing

When I try to do a "find" from the finder or "show search criteria" when using spotlight most of the search criteria is missing. Nothing is listed under "other". A minimal amount of options are available is I choose "date" or "kind".
Where is the list of search criteria stored and how can I get it back into the find feature?

Most like a component of the Spotlight.app which resides in /System/FInder/CoreServices/. Where? I don't know. Maybe the simplest thing to do is retrieve it from your Time Machine backup or bootable backup/clone. Barring that, download Pacifist and extract it from your install disk and replace the faulty one. Once, you've done that and solved the problem, reinstall the latest COMBO update.

Spotlight and Find Search Issue

I am trying to search for files and folders on my windows server via Spotlight, top right corner Search Box of windows, using the "Command F" but I get no results. When I was running under Snow Leopard searching for files and folder was excellent.
Is it an operating system compatibility like an AFP problem or what?
Regards

Most like a component of the Spotlight.app which resides in /System/FInder/CoreServices/. Where? I don't know. Maybe the simplest thing to do is retrieve it from your Time Machine backup or bootable backup/clone. Barring that, download Pacifist and extract it from your install disk and replace the faulty one. Once, you've done that and solved the problem, reinstall the latest COMBO update.

Spotlight and Finder searches don't work anymore...

Hi !
For 2 weeks or maybe more, the search function haven't work anymore, via Spotlight or the Finder...
Spotlight doesn't even seem to try, whereas the Finder keeps saying it is searching... but it never finds anything even if I ask for a file that directly is in the folder where it is searching...
Does anyone have any idea ?
Thank you very much !

Hi Dennis Marsden!
Thank you for helping me.
It doesn't work...
I mean that when I try to drag a folder or the entire disk to the privacy tab, the privacy tab remaines empty...
When I use the "+" button to browse the Finder and choose a folder, the privacy tab remaines empty too...
I've got another problem too. Maybe both are tied, that's why I'll explain it :
Sometimes, I am not able to rename a folder or a file... When I try to delete the name, it just doesn't work... And sometimes, it works properly...
For example, yesterday, I created a new folder automatically called "New folder", and I couldn't change the name !
But today, it has worked properly. But the problem happens so often, that today really is an exception...
Thank you very much !
Paaach'

File type in Spotlight and Finder search

I have several lectures that are all Keynote presentations (both 08 and 09) and wanted to make a smart folder to have them all in one place. However, doing that, I realized that my Keynote files are not listed as "Presentations" but rather as "Documents", along with my Pages documents and many other files, including images and music files. Actually, almost every file type is listed in the Documents category. Is there a way to manage these File Types? Searching by extensions does not seem to do the trick.
Very confused.

Thanks, that's much better. However I only find 21 files with this setting, but I know that there are at least 50 in my Home directory. Any idea why? Is there like a time limit as it seems that its mostly older files that are ignored.

My hard drive icon is gone from desk top and does not show up in spotlight or finder searches!

Hi there
recently my hard drive icon has disappeared from my Macbook Pro (10.7.4) desk top and does not show up in spotlight or finder searches! I have tried several fixes posted online for earlier operating systems with no luck.
Also, when I connect my external hard drive the icon does not appear on the desl top nor in the finder either, making looking for documents impossible.
Help!!!
Thanks in advance!
Marni

In "finder" click "finder" then "preferences" and navigate to the "general" tab.
Select which items you would like to have show on your desktop.

Spotlight and finder not working after Yosemite upgrade

Hi,
I just upgrade to 10.10.1 from 10.8 on a Mid 2012 Retina macbook pro, 2.7Ghz i7, 16GB RAM, 750GB SSD drive.
Since upgrading spotlight and finder have stopped working. When I first upgraded I noticed it worked very briefly and found some of my applications, but now nothing. The only thing it does is find the definition of the word I am searching for,
I have
gone in to sys pref > spotlight added and remove all folders and rebooted the machine
gone in to sys pref > spotlight > privacy tab and ensured no folders are in that pane
gone in to sys pref > spotlight > privacy tab and added "documents folder" closed sys prefs rebooted and then removed "documents" folder to try and trigger a re index
gone to terminal and typed "sudo mdutil -E /" which should erase and rebuild the index but i get the error back "Error: Index is already changing state. Please try again in a moment"
gone to terminal and typed "sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist" and then typed "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"
go to disk utility and verified my disk which comes back as showing no errors
logged in as another user but spotlight and finder still not working
Any other ideas my laptop is useless for work if I can't find anything,
Thanks

unfortunately I this is still not working, thanks for the link Eric i tried those options, but still the problem remains.
I can clear the cache and re index my mac, and while the system is re indexing spotlight works and I can find material during the reindex. This is obviously limited to the files that have been indexed at the point of using spotlight.
Once indexing has finished if I go to spotlight and try to search for anything, there are no results only the dictionary appears.
At the moment I have to delete the index cache every morning to trigger a re index so I can work, this is terrible and the worst upgrade experience I have had with any OS mac or windows

Spotlight and mail searches not working, but...

I contacted Apple Support by phone and they had me go through all of the procedures to re-index the meta data and so on on my iMac and still my Spotlight and Mail searches are not working properly. (I cannot find certain files even though I know they exist...more often than not!) Supposedly, when I "forced" a re-index operation by going to Spotlight Preferences and changing Privacy settings for the entire hard disk and then changing them back, the Spotlight icon on the top right of the menubar was supposed to indicate that re-indexing was taking place, but that never happened. It seems that I possibly have a corrupt metadata file which just won't re-index, or some kind of permission changed which doesn't allow re-indexing to happen, or SOMETHING like that.
Is there a singular hidden "index" or metadata file on the Mac under Lion where this information is stored, can I get at it so I can trash it, and if I do, will the computer automatically rebuild a new index file (if such a singular file even exists)?
I asked this question at a semi-local Apple Store Genius Bar as well, and they were scratching their heads. I have not yet brought the machine in to the store --- if I can avoid that lengthy step, I'd much prefer to fix this here in my office. (The machine works fine otherwise, and I need it here all the time, it's just that searching doesn't work)
I have also tried a re-install over the existing OS (leaving all my apps and documents in place), but have not tried a complete erase-and-install installation. I have a complete Time Machine backup of the entire drive, but the question remains...if I use Apple Migration Assistant to bring the apps and documents back in from Time Machine after doing a "clean" install on a wiped-clean hard drive, won't Time Machine also restore the old metadata that I suspect is corrupt? If so, how would I go about restoring all of my apps and documents without the use of the Migration Assistant or the Time Machine backup file (which may contain a corrupt index file)? If I do a hard drive clone with one of the available utilities dedicated to that purpose, how do I restore JUST the things I need (including serial numbers, etc) without risk of bringing over "bad" index files?
By the way, this machine was running Snow Leopard for well over a year before I upgraded to Lion, with no searching problems whatsoever.
Thanks for any help that anyone might be able to provide. I know I ask a lot of questions, but I don't want to go through the lengthy cloning of my hard drive and then doing a "clean" install and then be saddled with the same problem again.

Hi Linc,
I was able to get some text to appear by choosing "All Messages" from the Error Log list. Here's what I got when i filtered "mdworker" (I have indicated where I removed repetitions):
3/14/12 9:24:10.617 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
failed to parse embedded CMap.
3/14/12 9:24:10.617 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
syntax error, unexpected DICTSTART.
[about a dozen instances of the above two lines were removed]
3/14/12 9:24:10.622 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
*** process 2211 exceeded 500 log message per second limit - remaining messages this second discarded ***
3/14/12 9:24:26.203 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
[Five instances of the above line were removed]
3/14/12 9:24:55.603 PM
mdworker
Unexpected EOF, returning last token as fallback
3/20/12 3:54:30.197 PM
mdworker32
kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.
3/20/12 3:54:30.735 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
3/20/12 3:54:30.736 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
3/20/12 3:54:30.736 PM
com.apple.mdworker.isolation.0
Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.
And here is what I got when I filtered using "mds" (since these are all at different times, I didn't remove duplicates):
3/14/12 9:35:35.672 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/14/12 10:45:54.051 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/14/12 11:45:55.907 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 12:45:53.271 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 1:45:52.702 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 2:45:52.837 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 3:45:52.046 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 4:45:51.586 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 5:45:51.996 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 6:45:52.049 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 7:45:51.647 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 8:46:05.149 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 1:27:56.526 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 2:25:20.942 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 3:26:14.623 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 4:26:06.091 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 5:26:29.923 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 9:48:38.902 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/15/12 10:15:02.995 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 7:55:44.632 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 8:07:28.002 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 4:28:06.236 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/16/12 4:31:05.891 PM
mds
(Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/CAROLLE' (fd=15) left open on device 234881032
3/19/12 5:19:52.696 PM
mds
(Normal) FMW: FMW 0 0
3/19/12 5:19:52.704 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Root store set to FSOnly with matching create! (loaded:1)
3/19/12 5:19:59.291 PM
mds
(Warning) Server: No stores registered for metascope "kMDQueryScopeComputerIndexed"
3/19/12 5:20:31.340 PM
imagent
[Warning] Creating empty account: Default for service: IMDService (SubNet)
3/19/12 6:29:40.573 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/19/12 9:15:43.527 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/19/12 9:17:32.723 PM
mds
(Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/CHUBER' (fd=22) left open on device 234881032
3/19/12 9:39:28.149 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/19/12 10:43:40.855 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 7:22:42.424 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 9:46:04.479 AM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 3:54:42.852 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 4:23:54.016 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 5:23:56.550 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
3/20/12 9:18:16.565 PM
mds
(Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
I hope some of this information is useful in solving my problem. Thanks in advance for your help!

Spotlight and Finder is selective in what it Finds

Spotlight and Finder does not find some files and folders. As an example - I run firefox, but Spotlight/Finder will not located any files with the name "Mozilla" And of course there are several files/folders that have mozilla in the file/folder name.
Is this normal in SL?
Comment: Spotlight in SL seems quite different from Tiger. I liked it better in Tiger. But I would still expect it to Find stuff!

In a Finder search, set the search to include system files:
1. Produce a Search window by typing Command-F while in the Finder.
2. Pull down the menu that defaults to "Kind" and choose Other.
3. In the sheet that appears, type System in the Search field.
4. Select the "System Files" entry that appears.
5. If you want to be able to easily include system files in future searches, click the "In Menu" checkbox. System Files will now appear in the pop-up.
6. Click OK.
All the mozilla files and folder should now appear.
Regards.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Spotlight and finder cannot find files as of a certain date. What can be the problem and how to solve?

Spotlight and search field in Outlook on MacBoon cannot find files as of a certain date. What can be the problem and how to solve?

Reinstall on both.
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks without erasing drive
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Mountain Lion or Mavericks
OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X
     Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
                 if possible because it isthree times faster than wireless.
Restore your iPhone to reinstall iOS. Be sure to do this while connected to your computer and iTunes.
     Tap Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content and settings.

Spotlight and Finder related problems

Lately Spotlight hasn't been too keen on finding things in my drive, most notably applications. Once or twice, I experienced problems with Finder while this was occurring, so I relaunched Finder and everything began working properly. But lately I haven't been able to do anything to fix this. Just minutes ago I had to hold down my MacBook's power button because applications on my Dock weren't opening or closing when I told them to and finally it wouldn't restart when prompted either.
A quick search found that a few people might have been having similar problems, but I'd just like to know if any knowledge of this has been unearthed.
Could it be that my drive needs to be defragmented? Or maybe it's because of the recent, large updates?

In a Finder search, set the search to include system files:
1. Produce a Search window by typing Command-F while in the Finder.
2. Pull down the menu that defaults to "Kind" and choose Other.
3. In the sheet that appears, type System in the Search field.
4. Select the "System Files" entry that appears.
5. If you want to be able to easily include system files in future searches, click the "In Menu" checkbox. System Files will now appear in the pop-up.
6. Click OK.
All the mozilla files and folder should now appear.
Regards.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Organize search results in spotlight's finder search function ?

Hello.
The search results in the finder search window (cmd-f from within finder)—is there a way to organize them just like the files in any finder window (name, date, size, kind … ) ?
(I guess I should add that I of course know there is some organization offered by the sideboard on the right in the actual spotlight window. But this one offers other and in may cases less effective criteria.)
Would be very useful. Thanks a lot.
n.
Titanium PowerBook G4 / 1,67 MHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

If the ⌘F search results are in a "brushed metal" window in the "Finder", the window should have buttons for "Icon" and "List" view near the top left edge, just like a regular "Finder" window (unless you have customized your "Finder" toolbar to remove those buttons). Switching to "List" view should allow the full choice of sort criteria to be selected from "View Options" (⌘J).
If the window is in "aqua" mode (no toolbar or sidebar), it is still possible to switch to "List" view from the menu bar - "View" > "as List" (⌘2).

So now spotlight and finder in coloum view crash/not working

So now my spotlight never searches for everything (I tried restarting, then logging off and logging back again, reindexing, delted plist) nothing works
and finder in colum veiw crashes

unfortunately I this is still not working, thanks for the link Eric i tried those options, but still the problem remains.
I can clear the cache and re index my mac, and while the system is re indexing spotlight works and I can find material during the reindex. This is obviously limited to the files that have been indexed at the point of using spotlight.
Once indexing has finished if I go to spotlight and try to search for anything, there are no results only the dictionary appears.
At the moment I have to delete the index cache every morning to trigger a re index so I can work, this is terrible and the worst upgrade experience I have had with any OS mac or windows

Spotlight and iCal search not working after upgrade to Leopard

I recently upgraded my MBP to Leopard (10.5.7), and everything seemed fine. Except search in iCal wasn't working. I looked in forums and found a suggestion - renaming Calendar Cache in Home>>Library>>Calendars, then restarting iCal. iCal rebuilt the Calendar Cache (or looked like it was, progress bar and all), but search still wasn't working, failing to bring up events I was looking right at.
Then I tried to use Spotlight, and it didn't seem to be working either. I tried searching for Safari, and after a brief pause, Spotlight said "No Result Found." I confirmed Safari is in fact still on my MBP and working (opened from applications folder). After some more hunting on forums, I found a thread talking about how to force Spotlight to re-index, figuring that was at least Spotlight's problem. Here's the thread - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=381832
I tried what it suggested, using the command line in Terminal, but Terminal just spat back "No Index." So now I'm stumped. Any ideas? I've already tried rebooting, to no effect, though I'll try it again tonight.

Well, thanks again for all the suggestions, but I sort of stumbled on the fix - which turned out to be upgrading MacFUSE. I had forgotten I installed that so I could read/write to my BootCamp Windows partition under Tiger, and a couple times when I would restart my computer I'd get an error message about MacFUSE (ironically, the error claimed my OS was out of date, but it was really MacFUSE that was out of date).
After I updated to the latest version of MacFUSE and restarted, Spotlight started indexing. Now it works just fine. Not sure if this is a known issue, but it seems that was most likely the problem.
Now I just have to figure out why the search feature in Calendar doesn't work... already tried rebuilding the Calendar Cache multiple times. Any ideas for that one?

Spotlight and Find not working

Hi everyone
Apologies if I'm covering old ground here.
I don't use either Spotlight or Find very often, but discovered recently that neither now works. From other posts, I think this may have started when I installed the 4.11 software update. There are no new software updates available (ie I have already got the most recent Security Update, which seems to have helped in some other similar cases).
Spotlight just doesn't find anything. Finder's cog-symbol-thing spins for as long as I let it, with no result.
I have tried trashing the spotlight.plist file, and quitting the SystemUIServer process from within Activity Monitor. I have also rebuilt the disc using Disk Warrior. None of this helped.
I tried dragging the hard disc to the Privacy pane of Spotlight to force it to re-index, but nothing can be dragged to the Privacy pane.
All suggestions gratefully received.
Thanks, Peter

Thanks to everyone for their comments. There seem to be quite a few other threads detailing a variety of problems with Spotlight, but as yet I haven't found anything that helps.
Brief confusing addition: I just installed the recent iTunes update 7.6.1, and afterwards ran fsck just to see if everything was ok/no worse. When I rebooted, the little Spotlight icon at the top right had a pulsing white dot in the "magnifying lens". When I clicked on it, I got a drop down menu telling me that Spotlight was busy indexing, including a time bar that was apparently estimating how long this would take. Then it stopped, and all is exactly as it was previously, ie not working.
It could have been worse, I suppose - others seem to have got stuck in "permanently indexing" mode. I wish Apple would address this problem, but I'm not holding my breath - so any further ideas would be very welcome.
Thanks, Peter

Spotlight and Finder search

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