Does Spotlight Search HTML Files?

I have a folder full of HTML files I just imported to my MacBook about a week ago. They have been backed up by my Time Capsule. But when I search for keywords in the contents of them, they do not show up. The file names will show up, but none of the contents (which are mainly text). I have tried to force Spotlight to search only the folder that contains the files, but it does not seem to be searching the HTML files.
Are HTML file contents excluded from Spotlight searches? I seem to have a number of webpages that come in Spotlight for keyword searches that appear to be the result of searching the file contents. So is there a trick to this? Is there some way I can force Spotlight to index this folder? Just not sure why it seems to search the contents of some HTML files and not others.

Are HTML file contents excluded from Spotlight searches?
No, HTML files are not excluded.
Open System Preferences > Spotlight, under Search Results tab is Webpages checked?
If yes, download a new html file and see if Spotlight finds it. If yes, then it could be a permissions issue with the files you imported. Do a Get Info and compare permissions between the new and old files.
You can reset your permissions on all your files similar to Disk Utility using the Recovery Drive. See instructions here:
Use OS X Recovery Disk Assistant to reset Your files and folder permissions
(Fair disclosure: NeedHelp4Mac is my site. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.)

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Maybe I misunderstood you. Are you wanting to search for and find the html files for the site inside the domain file or the jpg, mov, mp3 and other media files that you have added to the site?
The text for each page is located inside an xml file that has been compressed into a .gz file. These are located inside folders named "site-page-plus a bunch of letters and numbers" (one for each page of the site) and these are located inside a folder titled "domain-and some combination of letters and numbers". I don't know if spotlight can cread the contents of a .gz compressed file. That's what would have to be done.
It's highly unlikely that Spotlight will be able to index those files but miracles do happen (if you believe in miracles).
OT
Message was edited by: Old Toad

Does a wrapper html file need to be in the same directory? Need advice

I'm doing some RnD experiments for an upcoming project and I would like to use Edge.
What I'm trying to do is load 2 different compsites in a wrapper.html file that is level above the compsites. For instance my setup is
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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You will need to update the new loction for even the product1_edge.js file and the product1_edgeActions.js file in the product1_edgePreload.js file.
Open up the product1.edgePreload.js file.
Search for 'aloader'.
Under this there should be a ' load: "product1_edge.js" ' change it to ' load: "product1/product1_edge.js" '
and do the same for product1_edgeActions.js file too.
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Where does Spotlight search??

I have a file located in ~/Library/Favorites/. If I search (Cmd-F) for the filename Spotlight will find the file if my search starts in
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~ or
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What's the deal? Is this some Preference that I'm missing? I tried adding ~/Library to the Spotlight System Preferences Search Results tab by dragging the folder from the Finder over there, but no go. Does Spotlight only search stuff listed here? Is there some way to add more stuff? What is the category labeled "Folders"? I read the meager Help, but it didn't.

That was helpful. Pasting the relevant information form the MacRumors forum posting by macguysoft below. Too bad spotlight makes it sooo difficult.
Step 1: Go to the Finder Search (Command + F or File > Find)
Step 2: Click on the "Kind" drop-down menu and click on other.
Note: If you don't see this pop up button, then make click on the "+" button right after Save.
Step 3: You'll see a dialog pop up and find System files. Once there, select the checkbox. Now go back to the search Window by clicking on the OK button.
Step 4 Make sure that the System files is selected in the first drop down menu. Now proceed to the Second drop down menu and select "include".
Now you can search for all your system files but don't expect for this to work with spotlight. Furthermore, you'll have to manually do this every time (only step 4 actually) you wish to search for something in your system. Hope this helps!
Message was edited by: RichardF

Spotlight searches and file location

Why does Spotlight no longer tell me where the file is located? It did in system 10.4 and in ML it doesn't. What use is that?

Don't know. In 10.4 you just hover the cursor over the file/folder name (in the search list) and its location appears. Now in 10.8.5, you can hover over til the cows come home and no information other than how large it is and when last modified.
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HT201285 What order does spotlight search display??

I know that this search displays the results by app. But within the app how are the results displayed? For example, if I typed in ok, and all my text messages that have the word ok in them pop up what order are those in if any?
Also, does anybody konw exactly how long deleted messages will appear in the spotlight search? Or how far back the search goes?

I can't be certain but they appear to be in reverse chronological order.
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Dreamweaver search - does not search phtml files

How can I convince Dreamweiner to search phtml files in a "search entire site" dialogue?
Is it supposed to? out of the box? mine does not...
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Can Spotlight search for file creation time ?

Hi,
Is it possible to use Spotlight to find files with a specific creation date and creation time ?
Example:
creation date: exactly 03/03/2008
creation time: after 10:00 and before 12:00

Hi Kees, not that I'm aware of, and since you can't run Classic and "Find File", I'd get EasyFind, Spotlight won't be reliable...
http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/
Near the bottom of the page.
you can at least sort by date/time then to narrow it.

Firefox will not automatically convert local pdf URL to include file:// like it does for local html files

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Press the '''Alt''' or '''F10''' key to bring up the tool bar.
Followed by; '''File > Open File.'''

Search Html files.

Hi all,
I'm looking for the best "index engine" if you want to search alot of html-documents for some words like:
"java application" AND tomcat NOT vb
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There are alot of searchengines out there but i know nothing about them.
Our setup is IIS or Apache, tomcat, servlets, beans, SQL server 2000 and a lot of articles to search.
I know M$ has some engine built into windows, but we don't want to use that.

Hello DBA77,
If you are looking for something to search for text in files, I would suggest maybe looking into PERL, or even Unix Scripts. Perl has great text-processing/handling power as well as does Unix scripts.
You can embed Perl scripts into your html pages if you wish to implement the search on a particular html page.
Hope this helps,
Ming
Developer Technical Support
http://www.sun.com/developers/support

What does spotlight search?

Sorry for the obvious question, but is there a document / thread (I tried looking) that gives a quick summary of how spotlight works and what it looks at?
I ask as it doesn't search, for me, footnotes of Word documents (which is annoying) and companies in Address Book (which is also annoying). I'm wondering if this is a problem with my computer, or standard.
Thanks!

Instead of searching directly on drives and within files, Spotlight indexes those drives and files, and searches within the index.
Therefore everything relies on Spotlight being able to keep that index complete, accurate, and up to date (to the microsecond, as you will be constantly changing files, renaming them, moving them around, etc., in normal use).
Needless to say, Spotlight fails to do that and despite the many clever and not-so-clever fixes that are sometimes suggested in these forums, the entire concept, in my opinion and in the opinion of others, is very silly, too clever for its own good, and we wonder what Apple was thinking of.
<I'm wondering if this is a problem with my computer, or standard.>
Alas, it's standard. To find the files you're looking for, more efficaciously, more quickly, and certainly more reliably, I suggest you try EasyFind as an alternative.
EasyFind is freeware and can be downloaded from here:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/index.html
12" PowerBook G4, G4 450 DP tower Mac OS X (10.3.9) on the Powerbook, and 10.4.2 on the G4 450

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When Spotlight indexes your computer, it generates a database of all of its contents. When you do a search, it restricts what's reported. Start with http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html and http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html To return results from everywhere, you need to add *include system files* and *visible and unvisible files* to your search criteria.

Can spotlight search for files in external drives?

I was wondering If I can index my hard drives so that when I do a search in spotlight, they show up along with the files in my primary drive.
Is this possible?

Yes, but due to connection reliability of external drives, and the constant background noise that is required to keep the index up to date on them, I turn it off for external drives. I use File Buddy or Easy Find to find files on external drives.

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Thank you. Yes, I confirm that you are indeed right. Notes are indexed and shown in Spotlight.
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TREX does not search PDF files

Hi,
we have another problem with TREX 6.0.
Our file repository is working fine, search also works for .txt files, but doesn't work for pdf files. Out pdf files are indexed correctly, but there are no result for this kind of files if we do a search.
What can we do?
Kind regards
Thomas

Your situation may already be solved. However, one thing I did not hear in the details was: 1) how many PDF's were being indexed. What was the size of the files? Did you check the TREX Monitor to ensure all the PDF's had been sent through the entire system. In the crawler monitor, did it state it found the correct number of files you believe to be in the index? By default, TREX holds documents in a que for 30 minutes between processes unless you either reset this property or flush the que.
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You want to index very large documents in PDF format from Adobe. These documents are not being indexed because they fail to pass the preprocessing stage.
Limitation PDF is a complicated file format to preprocess. Typically PDF files larger than 15 MB cause problems. The time taken for preprocessing and filtering rises to over an hour and the process delivers bad results. Recommendation You should avoid the indexing and processing of PDF files that are larger than 15 MB.
If you cannot find this document, let me know and I can forward it to you

Does Spotlight Search HTML Files?

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