Spotlight doesn't search

I have a user who is trying to search our mounted Tiger Server (10.4) volumes from his Leopard (10.5.5) system. He cannot retrieve any search results using spotlight. Searching his home drive works fine, but searching any mounted volume returns incomplete or blank results.
Why is this? How do I fix it? None of my other users are experiencing this, it's just the one machine. I've deleted the .plist for spotlight, restarted several times, and killed the systemUI in the activity monitor.
Please advise.

Does the server show up in that computer's System Preferences->Spotlight->Privacy tab? If so, delete it. While booted into the computer, this command in the Terminal app, will display all mounted volumes and whether or not Spotlight indexing is enabled:
sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/*

Similar Messages

  • Spotlight doesn't search Stickies

    I've just realised today that Spotlight can't find entries in Stickies. I have all boxes ticked in Spotlight so you'd think that Stickies being an Apple app, that it would also search in Stickies. I keep my software up-to-date, so it's not that.
    I have snother notes application called PadsX - and Spotlight doesn't search that either.
    Any suggestions anyone on how to make Spotlight more efficient?

    Hi Irena,
    A few ways to do it...
    http://guides.macrumors.com/Addingfiletypes_toSpotlight
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060729190236629&mode=print
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005052015041510
    SpiralBound is a note App that has a Search function bui;t in...
    http://www.rivulus-sw.com/Rivulus/SpiralBound.html

  • How to fix spotlight doesn't search movies,places or bing web search?

    spotlight doesn't search movies or anything bing web search, it only search file on my mac in yosemite. How can i fix this???

    Hello arnoota,
    for me Spotlight's content search works for docx, too. Are the info in your signature correct? If so you should install the 10.5.4 update of Leopard! At least for 10.5.3 some changes concerning Spotlight are documented by Apple, so probably this issue got fixed as well with one of these two updates.
    floba
    (MN358)

  • Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search...

    Hi there!
    I've got a problem with Leopard Server...
    It's the first time that I run a server version.
    Everything works great! But... Spotlight...
    Spotlight doesn't search anything on my internal HD. On my external HD (connected with FireWire) it works!
    I already deleted the .Spotlight Folder on my startup disk... But that doesn't help... I added my HD to the "privacy" Tab in Spotlight and deleted it after that... But that doesn't help, too...
    Has anybody of you an idea how to make this work?
    Thanks a lot!

    I got to Spotlight to search and index my internal harddisk again.
    I rebuilt the .Spotlight-V100 folder including the subfolder which I copied from a working (searchable external harddisk) which I initially deleted in my trial to get Spotlight working again.
    After a lot of tinkering with mdutil, Cocktail (a superb OS X system utility) and the Spotlight preference panel the overal problem for Spotlight might have been that I have got the internal and the Windows partition named starting the same name "Aristoteles" then a "blank" and the "HD" on the OS X partition and "WinXP" on the Windows partition. Obviously that got Spotlight confused because when I specifically excluded the windows partition (using the Spotlight preferences panel) and reactivated the remaining OS X partition using the "sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Internal" command (I renamed the OS X disk partition from "Aristoteles" to "Internal") ... bang Spotlight kicked in ... but the strange thing is that Spotlight kicked in telling me it is searching the OS X partition "Aristoteles" instead of "Internal".
    I cannot remember any technical comment (this is pure "trial and error" on my side) that Spotlight only takes the first part of a disk name. But if two partitions on the same disk start with the same name Spotlight may run in to troubles unless one is excluded from searching ... and even a later renaming of a partition doesn't help ...
    Message was edited by: OlympusUser

  • Spotlight doesn't search imdb or bing, why?

    It was mentioned that spotlight would also search the web. Well, in my case it doesn't. I have all sources checked in System settings for spotlight.
    But when I search for i.e. Mel Gibson I only recieve results from my harddrive and dictionary.
    Yes, I am on WiFi and connected to Internet. Running Yosemite on my MBA. I live in Sweden, but that shouldn't matter.
    Anyone else had this problem and found a sollution?

    Same problem but only on one share out of three.
    I just setup a OS X Server (10.5.2), standard (easy) configuration. Clients are 10.5.2 as well. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
    But spotlight searches are ONLY working on one out of the three shares! I tried deleting the Spotligt database (via Cocktail) and rebuilding but it didn't help.
    The something strange happened! One folder on one of the non-indexed shares was indexed but nothing else. Almost as if Spotlight had done a little bit of work and then crashed. But the md-processes are still running. Strange...
    I've tried looking for Spotlight log messages but haven't had any luck...
    Amazing that such a central piece of OS X Server can be so hard to diagnose. After searching the forums I understand that I'm not the only one with problems.
    Apple - how about user-friendly tool to verify and peek at Spotlight databases?

  • Spotlight doesn't search Word 2008 doc(x)s

    Though Spotlight doesn't have any problems searching within older Word files (all with the .doc extension), it does not search within the new Word 2008 .docx files. It does include the file names of .docx files, but doesn't seem to be able to search within the docs themselves. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you so much!

    Hello arnoota,
    for me Spotlight's content search works for docx, too. Are the info in your signature correct? If so you should install the 10.5.4 update of Leopard! At least for 10.5.3 some changes concerning Spotlight are documented by Apple, so probably this issue got fixed as well with one of these two updates.
    floba
    (MN358)

  • Spotlight Doesn't Search Servers anymore?

    Spotlight used to search servers attached to my computer such as backup drives I'd mount here at work but lately no matter what you search for on the drive it can't find. It comes back empty handed. What is the story here? is it a bug or something else i'm not aware of?
    Any help would be great

    Same problem but only on one share out of three.
    I just setup a OS X Server (10.5.2), standard (easy) configuration. Clients are 10.5.2 as well. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
    But spotlight searches are ONLY working on one out of the three shares! I tried deleting the Spotligt database (via Cocktail) and rebuilding but it didn't help.
    The something strange happened! One folder on one of the non-indexed shares was indexed but nothing else. Almost as if Spotlight had done a little bit of work and then crashed. But the md-processes are still running. Strange...
    I've tried looking for Spotlight log messages but haven't had any luck...
    Amazing that such a central piece of OS X Server can be so hard to diagnose. After searching the forums I understand that I'm not the only one with problems.
    Apple - how about user-friendly tool to verify and peek at Spotlight databases?

  • Spotlight doesn't search in word documents

    Hello,
    I have a Question regarding Spotlight: If I look for any phrase which is in word documents, Spotlight doesn't find it. (I got some documents from a friend, each about 100 pages). When I use OpenOffice and export the documents to pdf: no problem, Spotlight works perfectly.
    Is there a way to force Spotlight to index this folder? I thought, Spotlight would index word documents automatically...

    I found out the reason:
    The *.doc documents were rtf-documents with a doc at the end. Spotlight doesn't index rtf as it seems.
    Saving them as word solved the problem.

  • Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

    Leopard's Spotlight isn't searching email messages. I made a clean install of 10.5, and have two POP accounts. The message files are right there under ~/Library/Mail/... . I rebuilt the index for the system volume by adding and then removing the volume from the Privacy zone in Spotlight preferences. I also tried some of the command-line suggestions posted elsewhere for this problem. I recently added my backup volume to the privacy zone, but other than that the zone is empty.
    But the problem remains. Outside Mail.app, Spotlight never comes back with search results that are mail messages. Inside Mail.app, searching "entire message" returns 0 results. Does anyone know how to diagnose this problem? Can I see if a particular file is included in the metadata index?

    Hahaaaa! Solved it - at least for me...
    Please read the whole explanation first before just gabbing any presented commands and executing them in the Terminal. The solution requires no Terminal.
    I had exactly the same problem described by MikeW and JJ. I tried everything like you before at no avail, too. But I tried one more thing that did work and indexed all my mail. Here is what I did at the command line. Don't type the command right away. It will work, but this is not the root cause of your problem, I present it just to explain:
    find ~/Library/Mail -name "*.emlx" -exec mdimport {} \;
    This searches for the individual message (*.emlx) files themselves and throws them one by one onto the mdimporter which imports them just fine. Still, a plain mdimport ~/Library/Mail would not work which pointed me in the right direction: Spotlight did not "see" these individual message files. But Why?
    I fiddled a bit with file/folder permissions since I also simply upgraded from Tiger and ended up with old Tiger permission based user accounts. No result. I discovered, that in Finder the mailboxes, say ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox etc. were displayed as package files instead of folders. Strange. So again I tried mdimport -d1 ~/Library/Mail now with a bit of debugging. Aha! Spotlight imports this folder as type 'dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45mr3wgn8a', or similar, a dynamic UTI, instead of with 'com.apple.mail.mbox' as what it should have been. Since this unknown dynamic UTI dosn't mean anything sensible to Spotlight, it would simply skip the folder, not scanning it's contents with the well known result that mails cannot be searched by content.
    So, what is essentially overwriting these UTIs? Especially because this would not happen in another Leopard-created user account. I felt guilty as I added some custom UTIs in the past, but nothing to do with mail at all. So who carries UTIs for Mail.app? Well... Mail.app! Another Mail.app? YES! I remembered, that I had an older complete pre-Spotlight system backup on my current system, including all applications including Mail.app in version 1.3.something. AFAIK only with Mail 2.0 Apple changed the way Mail saves messages and they apparently also changed the UTI of .mbox to the new format. I simply deleted the old version of Mail.app. Immediately after that the icons of the .mbox changed and I could open these folders in Finder. I tried again mdimport ~/Library/Mail and - boom - Spotlight imported all my mails!
    Long story to explain my thoughts, here are 5 steps for you to try:
    1. Search your system to find out if you have multiple different copies of Mail.app. You can do that with Spotlight/Finder or enter in the terminal:
    sudo find / -type d -name "Mail.app" -ls
    (You need to be admin to sudo, type your password when prompted)
    2. Locate and check the found versions of Mail.app in Finder via the get info window.
    3. Delete all but the actual copy of Mail.app in /Applications from your system (empty trash!).
    4. Enter the following line in the terminal to have Spotlight import your messages:
    mdimport ~/Library/Mail
    Should take much longer now, depending on the number of mails you have.
    5. Check the result by searching mail content in Mail/Finder/Spotlight, enjoy!
    Note: If you did find and delete old versions of Mail.app, but step 4 did not work, you might have to log out and in or you can even try to restart the machine. In my case the result was instant. If all of that did not work for you - sorry - but probably the above helps you to track your particular problem down.
    ecke

  • Spotlight Doesn't Search Online

    Following the upgrade to Yosemite Spotlight no longer searches online so i have to open Safari first and search in the browser bar.  Is this a bug or am I nut using Spotlight or its settings correctly?
    Thanks
    Duncan

    Hello there duncal,
    If I understand correctly performing a search in Spotlight does not show any web searches at all. It seems to me that the Bing Web Searches is unchecked in the Spotlight preferences.
    Spotlight preferences - Mac Help
    To open Spotlight preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
    Search Results pane
    Choose which categories appear in Spotlight search results: Select the categories you want to include, deselect those you don’t.
    Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
    Regards,
    Sterling

  • Spotlight doesn't search iPhoto for included data, such as titles!!!

    This is a complaint I had about iPhoto 6 too. If you use spotlight and type in a word, spotlight will NOT return any pictures from iPhoto. It does not mine the iPhoto data such as photo titles, descriptions, film roll or event titles or keywords. It only looks at the file name brought in when it was first imported into iPhoto.
    Any ideas on why the guys at Apple can't figure out how to get to the data in their own programs? This problem has continued to exist for too long.

    Lots of times I need to find a photo within Finder, like when uploading to a blog and such.
    Of course, that's not supported, you know. And part of not supporting it is that the OS doesn't help you do it.
    There are three ways (at least) to get files from the iPhoto Window.
    1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
    2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
    3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
    To upload to MySpace or any site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
    This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. If you're using Gmail you can use THIS
    If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
    If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser. Or, if you want to access the files with iPhoto not running, then create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use THIS
    Regards
    TD

  • 10.7 Lion Spotlight doesn't search for dollar sign ($) anymore?

    Ok, I just upgraded my work laptop to Lion 10.7.2 and I'm having serious issues with spotlight and finder.  It seems you can no longer use the dollar sign ($) as a search operator?!?!
    I'm a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner user and have very few paper documents.  This includes scanning all of my receipts and naming them with the total at the end.
    So if I had a receipt that was for $5.35, the end of the filename would include "... $5.35".
    If I try to find the file via spotlight and search for "$5.35" nothing comes up...
    If I search for "5.35", the receipt comes up.
    Euros (€) searches correctly, but not the dollar sign...
    What is going on here?  This is seriously hampering my productivity and saved searches!
    Anytone else having this issue?  Google didn't seem to turn up any results and I can't be the only one seeing this behavior!?

    Steven,
    I haven't been able to solve it in Spotlight, but I did come across an application that does index and search properly.  It's called "Found".
    You can download it from the Mac App Store.
    https://www.foundapp.com/

  • IPhone spotlight doesn't search job titles for contacts

    I think this is so strange that you can't find a contact in your iPhone by searching for job title. Is there a way to turn this on somehow? Some setting I'm missing?
    I'm imagining the bathroom sink springing a major leak:
    "Honey! Grab the iPhone and call the plumber!"
    "What's his name?"
    "I can't remember right now! There's water spraying everywhere! Just search for plumber and you'll find him..."
    Not gonna find him. Enjoy your leak.
    Seems like a strange oversight. Spotlight on the computer at least brings up a couple of matches.
    Weird. No?

    Obviously the more fields that are searched the slower the search will be, but I would really like it to search all fields even if it does take longer...
    My 10 year old Handspring Prism smartphone did it
    What fields to search could be a selectable feature within the OS.
    I've submitted a suggestion as well...

  • Spotlight doesn't search Entourage 2004 email

    Spotlight searches don't include Entourage email files, only Apple Mail email files. Spotlight in Tiger showed both. I don't see any pref to include Entourage (only exclusions, where it isn't listed).

    You can use the terminal command:
    mdimport -L
    to see the list of importers that are installed. Also, the following is probably irrelevant to your issue, but you can diagnose individual files to see how they're indexed by Spotlight:
    mdimport -d1 file
    This shows the UTI (type) of the file or folder. If you get a dynamic UTI for a folder, that probably means Spotlight is not indexing the folder's contents. So far I don't know how to fix a dynamic UTI.

  • Spotlight Doesn't Search Imported Email Folders

    I recently bought a new Macbook Pro 15in. (first Mac) and used PST Converter Pro to convert about 20,000 emails from Outlook on my PC. From what I can tell, the emails seem to be all there and I can read them just fine. I cannot, however, use Spotlight to find anything in the On My Mac/Import Folders. All the indexing options for Spotlight are turned on. How do I get search to work for these imported emails?

    You can use the terminal command:
    mdimport -L
    to see the list of importers that are installed. Also, the following is probably irrelevant to your issue, but you can diagnose individual files to see how they're indexed by Spotlight:
    mdimport -d1 file
    This shows the UTI (type) of the file or folder. If you get a dynamic UTI for a folder, that probably means Spotlight is not indexing the folder's contents. So far I don't know how to fix a dynamic UTI.

Maybe you are looking for