Spotlight AND Search

My seach and spotlight functions have suddenly just stopped working, apart from that PC works fine, any ideas?

Take a look at System Preferences Spotlight pane. Are all the boxes checked?

Similar Messages

  • Get Spotlight and Search to work on external drive

    I have two external hard drives.  Both are Western Digital, about the same size.
    When I use Spotlight and Search on one of them, they display NO results.  The other drive displays results.  (They both have a lot of the same files.)  I KNOW the files are on the drive!
    I've tried adding and removing from the Privacy box of Spotlight preferences.  (it seems to do nothing when I do that - I don't see the spotlight as busy or anything) I've rebooted.  I've deleted the spotlight file on the drive and it seems to come back (.spotlight-v100).  Both drives are formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"  The Info box have the same settings - Everyone can read and write.  Only one small difference.  The drive that Spotlight/Search does NOT work on has a checkbox at the bottom that says "ignore ownership on this drive" with the box Checked.  The drive that works does not even have that checkbox or "ignore ownership...."
    I don't know what else to check.  I've searched the forums and just found suggestions to add and remove from Privacy.
    Help!

    Thank you for your reply.  Sorry, I have been there, done all that and much, much MORE.  I have read everything Mac thread around and tried all the workarounds to force spotlight to reindex the drive.  I still don't know that is even the problem.
    HOWever, I did fix it.
    I copied all my files from that drive to another drive.  Then I reformatted the drive and copied the files back over.  Now it works like it should.  So somehow, something at the "root" "format" level was messed up and using Disk Utility, Erase. Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) turned it around.
    So for me this is a fix.  I know for someone else that does not have another drive to temporarily copy the files to, it might not be an option.  But, at least erasing and formatting worked.
    **p.s. I'm only marking this Post as solving so that if someone else gets into the same fix.  At least they know they can try Disk Utility.

  • 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.

  • I have set up two users, one for myself and one for children.  The computer automatically logs in for the children with no password required.  When the children go to spotlight and type in a search criteria all of my files show up.  How do I prevent this?

    I have set up two users, one for myself and one for children.  The computer automatically logs in for the children with no password required.  When the children go to spotlight and type in a search criteria all of my files show and open up.  How do I prevent this?

    Log in to your account, and move all your files to your home folder. No other users should be able to access them there and they won't show up with a Spotlight search.
    Make sure your kids' account(s) do not have admin privileges.

  • Spotlight searching no longer working - indexing and search disabled.

    I've been searching the web and tried everything:
    Server 10.5.8
    In Server Admin - the attached drive is a SharePoint with Spotlight search on.
    I've used mdutil to enable Spotlight.
    I've checked permissions.
    I can search the Boot Drive. I can't search the attached drive.
    mdutil returns indexing and search disabled when used to turn it on.
    very frustrating.
    Anyone out there have a clue?
    Thanks,
    Mark

    HI James,
    Open System Preferences/Spotlight and click the Privacy tab. Where you see; Delete any locations listed, Quit System Preferences and restart your Mac and see if you can use Spotlight.
    Spotlight Tips
    Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
    Carolyn

  • 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?

  • Enabling Spotlight Web Search - Multiple Search Terms and Boolean Searches

    Hello there,
    I'm trying to incorporate a spotlight web search into my website as per these articles:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.5/en/c3ws21.html
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TA23537?viewlocale=en_US
    What I'm finding is that the search page provided by using template.spotlight file does not give search results when more that one search term is entered. Additionally, boolean terms (AND, OR, NOT) do not appear to work.
    I've tried to edit the template.spotlight file but I'm not sure what to add in order to provide this functionality which is otherwise present in spotlight searches within Mac OS. Has anyone else used the spotlight web search feature for their websites and had success with multiple search terms / boolean searches? Could someone please advise on how to edit template.spotlight to provide these search features?
    Thanks in advance,
    Leon G

    (bump)

  • Spotlight and Mail searches

    I have just replaced my 2007 MP with a shiny new one, (garbage can someone described it to me) !
    The computer is responding a bit slowly entering text into Safari fields, i.e. logging into sites, username & passwords - I type out a word and it takes seconds to appear in the box.
    Also searches in Mail & Spotlight do not yield any results and judging by other posts on the subject, is probably down to Spotlight indexing the 3TB of data on the Pegasus drive.
    I did not migrate any files over from my old MP as I wanted to keep a clean new drive.(I did this initially but ended up in a mess so had to erase the disk and reinstall Yosemite) I have reinstalled the majority of my apps that were on the old machine from the app store and note a significant difference in the sizes of the Libraries :
                        Old MP          New MP
    Library          88gb                 6 gb
    User library   33gb               11 gb
    So some questions arising that hopefully someone will answer :-
    Doing a spotlight search of the Pegasus drive - there is no progress bar (as noted in other posts) - there is a message that just says "Searching Promise". So presumably it is indexing the drive. Not sure how long it will take to do 3TB of data (a lot of video)
    Mail - doing a search in Mail does not do anything, no dropdown etc. I presume that this is using Spotlight and once that is indexed then a Mail search should work?
    Is there a way to migrate specific apps from my old MP? 
    I am wondering why such a big difference between the libraries on the 2 machines.
    Thanks & regards

    The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.

  • Trash Email and Search and Spotlight?!

    Hi and tnxs for reading.
    I noticed that with both email search and spotlight search, no mail are searched in trash folder.
    Is there any chance to include it in general search aswell instead of having to open that folder and search manually in it?
    Many tnxs.

    Howdy Jet787,
    You can enable the searching of the Trash when you do a spotlight search in Mail, by configuring the preferences for the application.
    To include the Trash and Junk mailboxes, and encrypted messages, when you search all mailboxes, choose Mail > Preferences, and then click General.
    From: Mail (Mountain Lion): Search messages
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11734
    Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
    Cheers,
    Sterling

  • 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!

  • I had a folder on my desktop (upper right hand corner) and I can't find it. I searched in spotlight and the trash and still can't find it.  any suggestions

    I had a folder on my desktop (upper right hand corner) and I can't find it. I searched in spotlight and the trash and still can't find it.  any suggestions?

    Thank you all for your help.
    I went into TimeMachine and found the folder.  All good!
    Everyone should have TimeMachine, life saver!
    thanks

  • Spotlight disabled - and Indexing and searching disabled - solution

    I have tried most of the recommendations here - and finally even reinstalled and rolled back my entire PB from Time Machine this night - but Spotlight did not work. Got message in terminal "Indexing and searching disabled".
    Solution found on web - below with 2 elements:
    1) Need to remove files that block for indexing
    2) Turn on indexing - Thanks to Patrick Kinsella
    1) Check your root directory for a file called .metadataneverindex
    If it's there, delete it.
    You can only find it after making invisible files visible (se below)
    2) These great hints won’t work if Spotlight is completely disabled (which some people have tried and don’t know how to reverse). If all else fails, follow this procedure:
    Make hidden files visible (copy and paste the next line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
    !!!You need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).
    Now in (previously hidden) /etc folder in your root/hard drive, find hostconfig, and open it with any text editor.
Does it include this line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
(note the two dashes astride YES)?
If not, type this line at the bottom. Save the file as hostconfig in your root folder (etc folder won’t accept it from a text editor). Now drag and drop this new hostconfig to /etc. This requires your admin password to replace the existing hostconfig.
    Reboot, and your spotlight is working. This may be a long way around, but it worked for me.

    Now make invisibles invisible again with this line in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO
    To fire up Spotlight, you may need to type this into Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on /
(the slash is important)
    If Mail is still not searching inside Entire Message, type this into Terminal to index your old messages:
sudo mdimport /users/YOURNAME/library/mail [or whatever the path to your mailbox message folders.
    The combination of these two did the trick for me.

    This tip is useful, but a way too complicated way to do this. A better and simpler solution is as follows:
    1. Login in to your server as an administrator.
    2. Open the Terminal application (in your /Applications/Utilities folder)
    3. Type the following exactly as written in to the Terminal:
    +sudo rm /.metadataneverindex+
    It will ask you for your password. I have never seen this file, so you may get a "file not found" error - in which case move on to step 4 anyway.
    4. Type the following in to the Terminal:
    +sudo mdutil -i on /
+
    5. Spotlight in the right corner of your server login should indicate it is indexing, and before long will start working.
    I don't believe editing of hostconfig is required at all, and you don't need to do all this stuff with making invisible files visible since you are already in the Terminal anyway.
    Hope that helps.

  • SPOTLIGHT and the impossibility to search!!!!

    Hi,
    I would like to know how to really search my mac. What is this Spotlight become????
    It only display pdf, iCal, images... well, in 2 words, the consumer/family stuff. But never anything from the library, system or a bit more deep places...
    I hope i just miss something...
    Please, can someone help? How can I REALLY search something on my mac now?
    THX!
    Federico

    yeah, great for emails... i agree it does a good job. But actually, no need of spotlight, the search within Mail is fine!!
    So... what's this? We can't search actually? It's even worse than PC!!
    Please APPLE< DO SOMETHING!!! You're going really wrong now. Take care of not becoming too family/consumers like by wanting to gain PC market's shares...
    how can you work on a machine that can't search everywhere???
    Anybody an tip to solve that?

  • Spotlight & Mail Search Not Working After Deleting email Account's '.OfflineCache' File.  How Do I Get Back to Normal?

    Running OSX 10.7.4 and Mail.5.2.
    One of 3 email accounts was constantly trying, but unable to synch.  The rotating splines were turning non-stop but not synching (other two email accounts worked just fine.)  After doing some searching on the internet, I found several articles about this.  Many included the symptom of the "Recovered Messages" constantly being recovered/generated.  I had noticed that I would get some recovered messages on occaision, but had never noticed it to be problematic.  These articles suggested that the ".OfflineCache" file for that email account had been corrupted or the root of my problem.  So, I deleted the .OfflineCach file as per this article...
    Fix OSX Mail Creating Multiple 'Recovered Message
    Well that got my mail working again.  However, I soon noticed that spotlight no longer works and when I try to search mail, it doesn't work.  It will only return a complete email address/contact; it doesn't search the contents of the email.
    I tried to get spotlight to re-index the hard drive.  However, when I try to drag a folder or volume to it, I get the error:
    Since spotlight and mail search have always worked flawlessly for 5 years, I'm confident this is related to having deleted " .OffflineCache" for that particular email account.  However, it seems strange that mail search won't work for the other email accounts.
    Any other tips for getting spotlight back online?
    How about the .OfflineCache file.  Will Mail restore it, replace it on it's own?
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Also, looking back, not long before this problem started, I was trying to send a single email with numerous pictures ( around 50 or so.)  I forgot to select "medium" for the picture size and it started trying to upload them at full size.  I realized this after a minute or two and cancelled the upload, changed to 'medium' and sent the email with no problem.  I point this out because the "Multiple Recovered Messages" error seems to be related to or being induced by having an excessively large file in the particular mail account's .Offline.Cache file.

    Well, a couple days later and it seems that the .offlinecache has been rebuilt.  Finder, Spotlight, & Mail search all seem to be working normally now! 

  • Spotlight and indexing of other disk partitions

    Hi,
    I have the internal drive of my 12" PowerBook formatted into two partitions, a small maintenance partition that's running 10.4.8, and a main partition, that's running 10.5.2. While I don't have a problem with upgrading the maintenance partition to Leopard, after seeing this report, I'm wondering if it's not a good idea to have Tiger and Leopard installed on separate partitions of the same internal drive. This leads to my questions:
    Question 1:
    Is it true that booting into a Tiger installation will cause Spotlight to overwrite the index files that Leopard created on either (or both) partitions? If this is true, then it would seem that I should really upgrade the maintenance partition to Leopard to prevent complete reindexing whenever I switch startup drives from one partition to the other.
    Question 2:
    Is there any way that I can tell Spotlight on the maintenance partition to not index the main partition? I only boot into the maintenance partition to run tools to maintain the main partition, so I have no need for Spotlight when booted into the maintenance partition.
    Question 3:
    Even if I upgrade the maintenance partition to Leopard, is there any way that I can prevent each partition's installation from indexing the other?
    Thanks,
    Ken

    I want to make sure that I have each partition's installation set up so Spotlight won't corrupt or redo what the other partition's Spotlight has already done.
    You can't do that, which is why I ended up with the less than satisfactory solution I have. When you boot up Spotlight begins to run as part of the system activities. It then looks at every mounted drive. Each and every drive has an invisible Spotlight folder. In that folder are the instructions to Spotlight about whether the drive or any directories on the drive have been excluded from Spotlight, and also, if the drive is supposed to be indexed, then the indexes themselves are in that folder. Thus the command line instruction to turn Spotlight status on or off specifies the path to the particular drive. There is no way to "quarantine" the Tiger or Leopard Spotlight. Whichever version is running looks to see if any given drive is supposed to be indexed, and, if it is, indexes it. The two versions can read each others general instruction about whether or not something is supposed to BE indexed, but can't read each others actual indexes. So if the instruction is for indexing to be on, then the version of Spotlight running looks at the index, can't read the index from the other version, and so proceeds to create a new index.
    You can either have Spotlight on or off for a particular drive, that information will be read by both versions of Spotlight and acted on accordingly. Thus I booted in Leopard, ran the command line to turn the status off on my Tiger drive, preventing the drive from being indexed in Leopard, and edited the /etc/hostconfig file for Tiger to disable the Tiger Spotlight. When I booted in Tiger Spotlight didn't run AT ALL, so it didn't re-do the indexing for either the Tiger or Leopard drive. As far as I've been able to figure out this is the best solution, since I am generally booted in Leopard.
    If all I had done was to add the Tiger drive to the Leopard Privacy pane, when I booted in Tiger its Spotlight would run, consult the preference for its drive, see it wasn't supposed to index its own startup drive, look at the information on the Leopard drive, see that that drive was supposed to be indexed, be unable to read the index and create a new one. When I next booted into Leopard it would have to re-index its own drive because its index would have been over-written.
    Hope that makes a nasty situation clearer. I pondered the conundrum for some time before coming up with a solution. When I am booted in Tiger (which is rarely) I have to remember to use EasyFind when I want to find something, and when I am in Leopard a search of the Tiger drive is "brute force" only, but it can be searched.
    Francine
    Francine
    Schwieder

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