How do I stop spotlight from indexing files?

I only have 2GB of RAM and Indexing files really slows down my computer, so much that i can hardly operate the computer. Is there any way that i can stop Spotlight from indexing my files automatically or have it index every week instead of every day?

It shouldn't be running so much that it slows down the computer. It will run for a while, initially, but after that it should index files on the fly as they are added. I suppose if you dumped a ton of files onto the hard drive, it would spend a while indexing them.
You might try restarting the index as it might be corrupt. To do so, go to the Privacy tab in Spotlight. Add your hard drive to the list. Wait about 10 seconds, then remove your hard drive. Don't do that while you're working, though.

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How do you stop Spotlight from indexing other OSX partition?

I have my harddrive partioned, on one partition is osx 10.8, on the other is osx 10.9. I'd like to stop Spotlight on 10.8 from indexing 10.9's partition. If 10.8 is booted and I set Spotlight to not index 10.9's "macintosh HD" via systemprefs/spotlight it has the unfortunate consequence of carring over, so when I boot into my 10.9 partition Spotlight won't be indexing - which is not what I want.
Anyone able to shed some light on this one?

Unfortunately, when you add a drive in the Privacy field, a small file is created on that drive which tells Spotlight not to index it. So both 10.8 and 10.9 see that file and won't index, no matter which OS you did the Privacy change from. Also then, of course, if you remove the drive from Privacy, both will index it.
At least that's how it's worked for me. I haven't been able to get the same drive to behave differently for multiple startup partitions.

How can I stop Spotlight from indexing external drives?

I work in an environment where we plugin several different costumer harddrives all day long as part of our working process. Often only to extract one file from a given drive. Therefore its annoying that Spotlight automatically starts indexing these drives, because it slows down everthing, but also because our windows costumers suddenly see these weird mac files on their drives, that are invisible to the macuser. The Privacy setting is not of much use, as its impossible to add oru costumers drives to the list - we simply don't know the drive until we see it.
How can spotlight stop indexing?

The Privacy option is okay for private users, but at work we receive alot of harddrives from costumers and we simply cannot spend the extra time waiting for a drive to be indexed every time it is connected. That drive may never be connected again as it belongs to a costumer, and it is impossible for us to add drives to the Privacy pane, because we do not know they exist before we see them infront of us. The ption to disable all external drives from being indexed would be great. Or that the indexing can be stopped in the spotlight menu, or that the indexing will not start until 10 minutes after the drive has been mounted - and only if the drive is inactive.

How do I stop spotlight from returning .r and .h files

how do I stop spotlight from returning .r and .h files?

Hello jtenny,
Welcome to the Discussions.
I had a similar problem with Safari opening .pdf files. It went away when I went into the following folder: Your Home Folder/Library/Internet Plug-ins, and dragged out any files that looked as if they might make a difference, just one at a time, onto the Desktop. (N.B. I did not Trash them; and if removal made no difference, I replaced the file into the Plug-ins folder.) You will have to restart Safari on each occasion; and on a couple of occasions I found that re-setting Safari (Safari Menu) was necessary to give the application a start-from-scratch with each download attempt.
That's a somewhat makeshift way of approaching it; but provided you don't trash the plugins, and provided you restore those that make no difference, it can't do any harm -- within my experience anyway.
All good wishes from Ireland
Martin
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Powerbook 15-inch G4 1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) Several veterans that go on and on. 40gig, 3rd generation iPod

How to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives

Is there any way to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives?
Thanks

Yes, in Spotlight preferences there is an option to do this. I'm not on my Mac now, so I forget exactly where in Spotlight preferences it is. I believe there is a second tab that you have to click on, then click the "+" sign to add items to Exclude. Just add your backup drive.

Stop Spotlight from indexing new drives

I know how to block a drive in Spotlight's privacy settings.
What I'm looking for is a way to stop Spotlight from indexing a drive every time I plug one in. I'm often connecting external drives for work & spotlight immediatley starts to index & I go in and add it to the blocked list in Spotlight> Privacy.
Is there a way to just have Spotlight NOT try to index a new drive?

Sorry, I missed that part.
Try this, add this file to the external drive.
touch /Volumes/name of the external drive/.metadata_never_index
This will add a file called .metadata_never_index to the root of that drive.
You can also disable spotlight
sudo mdutil -a -i off
To re-enable Spotlight:
sudo mdutil -a -i on

How do I stop Thunderbird from storing files on my desktop?

I'm using Win7 and Thunderbird keeps storing files on my desktop. How do I stop it from doing that?

It would appear that you have moved your profile, or parts of it.
In the account settings, look for the setting under ''Server Setting''s named ''Local Directory''. Is this set to your desktop?

How do I stop PS from reverting files saved at 72 dpi to 240 dpi?

I am trying to save a jpeg file as 72 dpi but CS5 keeps reverting it to 240 dpi when I reopen it. How do I save the file as 72 dpi?

First it does not matter. The ppi value is used for determining the physical print size and therefore may not affect the file size. I say may as photoshop is capable of altering the pixel dimentions if resampling is enabled when resizing the image.
As for both files having different ppi values but same pixel dimentions will tell you that only the physical print size has changed and nothing else. So it could be resonable to say the ppi could be automatically changed by photoshop on import to fit the document even though no pixels were changed.
To see if this is true use save for web it strips the ppi from the metadata and normally will import into photoshop at 72ppi as that is the default value the photoshop uses when it can not find the ppi.

How do I keep iTunes from indexing files on external drive?

Hi,
I did a clean install of Vista from XP. I used Windows Easy Transfer to restore my As part of the upgrade, I did a fresh install of iTunes 8. I think I was running 7 before but this may not be significant, and I may be mistaken.
iTunes automatically (?) indexed all MP3 and m4a files both on my C: drive and on my external drive. These files are largely duplicates; I only want my music on C: to be indexed by iTunes. I've searched and searched here, Help and with Google, have found some very good information about moving files to another drive, but haven't managed to find a way to limit the drive that iTunes looks at. (I have 3 external drives but only the one has music files on it.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.
tim

Chris CA wrote:
By default, iTunes copies the music into /My Music/iTunes/iTunes music folder.
Yes, but I don't use the default.
iTunes does not move files from their original location. It copies them to the iTunes music folder when they are added to the library.
I'm pretty sure mine does not copy them; it creates pointers to them in their original locations. I believe this is an available option to the default.
If they are not showing up in iTunes and they are not in the iTunes music folder shown in iTunes prefs -> Advanced - iTunes music folder location, then you are good to go.
Then I'm good to go. I've got 2800 tracks in my iTunes music folder, plus another 6000 elsewhere on my C: drive, all of which are correctly listed in iTunes. (There also a bunch of WMAs which, for these purposes, don't exist). None of the ones from my J: drive are listed in iTunes and none have been copied to the iTunes music folder. Thanks again for your help.

Stop Spotlight from Indexing drive

I recently purchased a new external drive - partitioned it into 3 partitions but Spotlight is being very insistent on trying to index one of those partitions that doesn't even have anything on. It says "Indexing My External Drive" and has been continuning to do this forever. To the point where I decided to repartiton the drive but no, it still wants to Index nothing! I've also added the drive to the Privacy setting in Spotlight Prefs.
Driving me nuts! Any help would be much appreciated.

Georgy
Keep in mind that the index is stored on the drive that is being indexed. As such, indexing an external volume does not affect your main drive.
Remember also, that when you do update your external drive, the indexing only updates the changes made to the drive on the fly, provided of course if it is mounted and allowed to do so.
My suggestion, let Spotlight index the drive. Particularly if you are using it as a backup. Once in place, updating the index and searching is extremely fast.
Be careful however, of using third-party solutions. Some will affect Spotlight's normal indexing process and their preferences have to be changed for Spotlight to work.

How can I stop Firefox from making files read only?

Firefox (and not IE or Google Chrome) makes certain files (Movie Magic Screenwriter files, for example) read only. Is there a way to prevent that?

Let's attempt to fond out what you have installed that added that "noise" to Firefox.
'''Try Firefox Safe Mode''' to see if the problem goes away. [[Troubleshoot Firefox issues using Safe Mode|Firefox Safe Mode]] is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
*In Firefox 29.0 and above, click the menu button [[Image:New Fx Menu]], click Help [[Image:Help-29]] and select ''Restart with Add-ons Disabled''.
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
* On Windows: Hold the '''Shift''' key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
:[[Image:Safe Mode Fx 15 - Win]]
'''''If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode''''', your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the [[Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems]] article to find the cause.
''To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.''
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.

How can I stop Acrobat from reordering files when importing files to create a PDF?

To all those more knowledgable than I,
I am converting a larger amount of tiff files into one PDF. The TIFF files are numbered 1-100. When I "add files" in the diaologe window they reorder because Acrobat does not look at the third number so then I have to move up and move down the file names so that they are in a sequential order. Is there a way to have Acrobat not do this?!
Thank you.

CreatePDF is a special web page for making PDFs, for people who don't have Acrobat.
Acrobat forum here: http://forums.adobe.com/community/acrobat/creating__editing_%26_exporting_pdfs
Be sure to include your Acrobat version.
Good luck!

All my excel files were converted to pdf. Why would this happen and how do i stop it from doing so?

All my excel files were converted to pdf. Why would this happen and how do i stop it from doing so?

shloimypt wrote:
All my excel files were converted to pdf. Why would this happen and how do i stop it from doing so?
Relax, they weren't converted to PDF.
You can tell by right clicking ANY of them and choosing "Properties". You'll see there that they're STILL .xls or .xlsx files. The "association" has changed and Windows now indicates that they open with Reader, which isn't right.
Where it says "Open With" under the General tab, you can click "Change" and re-select Excel as the default app to open thim.
See: http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/application-file-icons-change-acrobat.html

How can I stop Firefox from opening (to "File Not Found") when opening my Opera browser?

Ever since I installed Opera 10.61 on my new computer (Windows 7 Ultimate operating system), whenever I open Opera, Firefox opens one second later with the following error message:
'''File not found '''
Firefox can't find the file at /C:/Users/Nasheed/AppData/Local/Opera/Opera/temporary_downloads/client-en.xml.
* Check the file name for capitalization or other typing errors.
* Check to see if the file was moved, renamed or deleted.
TRY AGAIN.
<nowiki>****************************************************</nowiki><br />
This happens EVERY TIME I OPEN THE OPERA BROWSER. How can I stop this from happening? I'm stumped.
[EXTRA INFO - I was unable to enable Firefox to access my previous profile on the new computer (despite putting the old profile in the appropriate Mozilla Firefox folder. So, there are now two profiles in that location.
After reading the answer to another forum member's question, I attempted to resolve the problem using Profile Manager, but I was unable to locate the Profile Manager. The Windows "Search" feature is not enabled on my new computer (nor can it be enabled from the Customize Start Menu options).]

Thank you for your response, Cor-el.
I had Opera set as my default browser since this began happening. I changed my default browser back to Firefox mainly because having Firefox open one or two seconds every time I open Opera was/is such a nuisance.
I believe this problem began because I attempted to manually transfer the files from my old computer to the new one (via the backed up files in my external drive). I was unfamiliar with Windows 7 when I did this. Microsoft changed the file set up from what I had been used to in Windows XP. I used XP for six years before being exposed to Windows 7 (I never had Vista).
I'm almost sure this problem has something to do with where I placed the application data when I was trying to reestablish the program set up on the new computer.

How do I stop OSX from creating ._ thumbnails of network files

Our macs are networked to Windows servers that hold a large amount of image files. These are updated on a continual basis unfortunately the files can't be saved directly to the server but copied blindly into the folder from our macs. The ._ invisible files on the mac appear in windows, not really a big deal (although I would rather they didn't exist a all) The big problem comes when the folders on the server are opened on the mac, it takes forever for the mac to create the little alias or thumbnail files for each image. How do I stop OSX from doing this.

You can stop "some" of those pesky ._invible files with this...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301711
Havent seen a way to stop the annoying icon thing, but possibly you could reduce it a bit by using the Finder Pref... Open New Windows in Column mode.

How do I stop spotlight from indexing files?

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