Spotlight Comments are Disappearing

For some reason spotlight comments keep disappearing from files. I triple check the comments after I'm done adding them. The next day I check the files to see if they are there, and they are not.
I do not understand why this keeps happening.

Starnerg wrote:
I'm sure we could find the problem, but I can't afford to lose any of the comments that are working in the folders. It would take months to get them back.
When I type in mdls /path/to/file in terminal and drag the files in. The comment is still in kMDItemFinderComment, but not in the get info window. As long as the comment is in kMDItemFinderComment will comment still work the same?
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
When I tried to bring the comments back into Get Info yesterday by using the applescript below they came back, however when I checked today the went away again.
tell application "Finder"
set curfolder to choose folder
repeat with this_item in entire contents of curfolder
set ppath to quoted form of POSIX path of (this_item as alias)
set comment of this_item to (do shell script "mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment " & ppath & "| awk -F\\\" '{print $2}'")
end repeat
end tell
that looks like a script I made for somebody in a similar situation once. did you get it from one of my threads?
the fact that this keep happening does suggest that either the .DS_store file or the resource forks are corrupt. If you don't want to zap all .DS+Store files I really suggest you try it out on one folder of test files with the last terminal command I gave you. it will only affect that particular folder, nothing else. just copy a folder of files that have this issue and run the command on the copied folder. see what happens.

Similar Messages

  • Spotlight Comments - are they attached to the file?

    Just wondering, if I were to add some comments to a document under the "Spotlight Comments" box which comes up when you "Get Info" on the file...are those comments appended to the file or do they only appear when the file is on my computer.
    Basically, if I send the file to someone else, I don't want the "comments" I added through Spotlight to be in any way attached to the file I send?

    i believe the comments are only attached to the spotlight database. they should not travel with the file.

  • Spotlight comments are missing?

    I added Spotlight comments to most of my documents to make them easier to locate. Easy enough, although it took some time.
    This morning I've found that those comments are missing. Of the several documents I checked, none had comments.
    The only thing I can think of is OnyX. I use OnyX to clean up my system periodically, and one of the options is the Spotlight Index.
    Is selecting the Spotlight Index killing my comments?

    One of the OnyX routines you ran killed them, but not Spotlight indexing. I almost never use the Spotlight comments field, because the content is not actually a part of the file. Instead the information is stored in a hidden Finder data file, and, as you've discovered, it is possible for this hidden data to get removed.
    Francine
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • Spotlight Comments disappeared today

    I have been using Spotlight Comments on files for months. Today they seem to have disappeared. Why?

    Thanks for the reply.
    I did the additional test, curious to see what would happen.
    I entered a new comment on a file where the previous comments were invisible.
    Note that the old comments were replaced ... apparently.  I observed a fleeting phenomenon where command-I on a file with invisible comments actually flashes two windows very quickly.  I have no clue what is going on, but perhaps there is one file containing "oxstress" and other comments, and another containing "spotlight_test"; I checked this with spotlight by searching "spotlight AND oxstress", I the double checked with Houdaspot using the unique file name as a filter, and it found the file where both search items are needed for a match.  I also double checked the latter by adding a non-existing third comment and it was not found.  It appears duplicate resources, somewhere, are present.  An expert like V.K. is needed to explain.
    Another thing that I did was to save a copy of the .DS_Store file so that I can at least recover the comments that way using BBedit or awk.  The below results show that the .DS_Store spotlight comments are deleted if new comments are entered for a particular file, but Spotlight finds the file anyway.  V.K. previously noted that the spotlight comments are saved in multiple places.
    Here are the results:
    Last login: Mon Apr  8 07:59:52 on ttys000
    opus-2:Fruits jw$ pwd
    /Users/Work/Fruits
    opus-2:Fruits jw$ xattr -l Radak_2013_ros_exercise_oxstress.pdf
    com.apple.FinderInfo:
    00000000  50 44 46 20 43 41 52 4F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |PDF CARO........|
    00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
    00000020
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment:
    00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 5F 10 2B 6F 78 73 74 72  |bplist00_.+oxstr|
    00000010  65 73 73 20 72 6F 73 20 72 65 64 6F 78 20 65 78  |ess ros redox ex|
    00000020  65 72 63 69 73 65 20 73 69 67 6E 61 6C 69 6E 67  |ercise signaling|
    00000030  20 72 61 64 61 6B 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00  | radak..........|
    00000040  00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
    00000050  00 00 00 00 00 00 36                             |......6|
    00000057
    com.apple.quarantine: 0000;5151afb4;PluginProcess.app;
    opus-2:Fruits jw$ mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment /Users/Work/Fruits/Radak_2013_ros_exercise_oxstress.pdf
    kMDItemFinderComment = "oxstress ros redox exercise signaling radak"
    *********  below text appears after entering "spotlight_test" into the Spotlight Comments for this particular file   *********
    *********  n.b.!  The old comments were errased    ********
    opus-2:Fruits jw$ mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment /Users/Work/Fruits/Radak_2013_ros_exercise_oxstress.pdf
    kMDItemFinderComment = "spotlight_test"
    opus-2:Fruits jw$ xattr -l Radak_2013_ros_exercise_oxstress.pdf
    com.apple.FinderInfo:
    00000000  50 44 46 20 43 41 52 4F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |PDF CARO........|
    00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
    00000020
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment:
    00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 5E 73 70 6F 74 6C 69 67  |bplist00^spotlig|
    00000010  68 74 5F 74 65 73 74 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01  |ht_test.........|
    00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
    00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 17                          |........|
    00000038
    com.apple.quarantine: 0000;5151afb4;PluginProcess.app;
    opus-2:Fruits jw$
    -jano

  • Spotlight Comments - questions, limits and opinions

    My wife and I are a little behind the curve. We updated our MacBook Pros, MacPro and PowerMac G5 to Leopard early this year in part due to the fact that my testing showed that Spotlight Comments are persistent on our home ethernet - If I put identifying comments in a file's Get Info > Spotlight Comments box while it is on my MacBook's Desktop, then move it to a "file server" (a shared drive on the PowerMac or MacPro), my wife can see and modify the Comment from her MacBook. The comments almost seem to be part of the file itself (yes, Francine, we know they really are not) unlike the volatile pre-X Finder Comments. We do not normally have any Windows machines on our network and when we do we certainly do not use one as a file server. We're pretty much vanilla Apple.
    Now, on to my questions:
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    2 - What are the limits in Spotlight Comments? Are there any? How many characters will that field take? I am asking this since I have been trying to put info concerning an image into its Spotlight Comment field and once I close the Get Info window the Comment is gone. If I check with mdls in Terminal the image's kMDItemFinderComment field is not even created. I have been trimming off hunks of characters in the Comment and am now below 700 but it still won't take it (the file is not locked, I have full control of it, and it doesn't appear to matter what files' or folders' Comments field I try to paste it into). Is this limit documented anywhere, because I've been Googling for it all morning with no matches.
    3 - if not Spotlight Comments, then what? I see DefaultFolder has an option to write Comments as "OpenMeta Tags" but what little I could understand upon looking that up made it sound like they're Spotlight Comments that are embedded into the file itself - even files that do not normally have a spot for Comments. Putting the description in the filename is much easier in X than previously, but gets a bit unwieldy very quickly. Many (but not all) image formats can accept descriptions in things like EXIF, but doing so changes its Modification Date and screws up our sorting...
    4 - only tangentially related: how many years did it take for Apple to put in Safari a function that we made use of all the time in Netscape & IE in pre-X times: put the source URL of a download in the Comment field. Now why can't the Mozilla team put that in Firefox? It's not like I haven't posted that as a feature request multiple times...
    I know that file "tagging" is a hot topic and I do not expect a real solution here, but if someone can confirm that there is a character limit in a file's Spotlight Comment field and let us know where or if it's documented...
    Message was edited by: Notary Sojak

    UPDATE - apparently once a file's kMDItemFinderComment field is created (I got the Comment to stick once I was below 600 characters) it can take more characters. I jut replaced the successful 595 character comment with the full 735 character comment I had initially been unable to add and it is visible from all the Macs.

  • File Info window and Spotlight comments

    I typed somme comments in File Info Window, box titled Spotlight comments.
    All these comments are gone after System restart (Snow Leopard 10.6.8) and I am unable to read them again. But STRANGE... when I do a Spotlight research with one word I typed in Spotlight comments, the file name is displayed and I can open its Info Window, but no luck the Spotlight comments are still empty.
    The chain I typed are still there in the file info but hidden to my eyes, is there a mean to retrieve these comments?
    Best regards and thanks, please excuse me language as I'm wrting from France.
    JfS

    I typed somme comments in File Info Window, box titled Spotlight comments.
    All these comments are gone after System restart (Snow Leopard 10.6.8) and I am unable to read them again. But STRANGE... when I do a Spotlight research with one word I typed in Spotlight comments, the file name is displayed and I can open its Info Window, but no luck the Spotlight comments are still empty.
    The chain I typed are still there in the file info but hidden to my eyes, is there a mean to retrieve these comments?
    Best regards and thanks, please excuse me language as I'm wrting from France.
    JfS

  • Spotlight comments backed up to external drive

    I am using spotlight comments on JPGs to record information about the photo, such as the person who took it, their email, etc. I do not want those comments to be visible in the photo itself.
    I know that these spotlight comments are not in the photo file itself, but in the .DS_store file.
    1) How do I back these comments up on an external drive?
    2) How do I insure that these comments are not lost when I use programs OnyX to clean up my drive?

    I found I was able to backup my Spotlight comments to an external drive without using carbon copy cloner.
    I used OnyX and under the Finder options, I made the invisible files visible. I then manually selected the .ds_store files from the internal hard drive to the backup drive. Now the Spotlight comments appear on the external drive.
    The disadvantages to this technique is that I must do this for every folder that contains files with Spotlight comments. For me, that is only five folders. The other disadvantage is that once the .ds_store file appears on the backup drive, it appears that I am not able to delete, replace or update that file on the backup drive. I would guess that I could trash that folder and replace it with the folder on the internal drive.
    When I was finished, I used OnyX to once again make those files invisible.

  • Support for Spotlight Comments Yet?

    One of the glaring problems with iPhoto is its lack of support for Spotlight. I took 2 months to meticulously add Spotlight comments to all of my archived photos, only to find that when I import them into iPhoto, I can no longer search by metadata. How idiotic was that? Not even a utility to import them! Did they finally fix this in iPhoto 6?

    Nope, just tried this and the Spotlight Comments are lost: Not attached to the copy that's made in the iPhoto Library, and not imported into any field in the photo's metadata.
    Spotlight Comments seems a bit of a last minute good idea that never took off to me. I wonder if it will be exploited in future releases or if it will quietly get stuck as borderline useful as it is now. I agree: Apple added this field to Get Info; you'd think they'd make use of the **** thing in their software!

  • Spotlight Comments not found

    I added "backup" as a Spotlight Comment to a variety of files and folders using an automator action. When I search using the query Spotlight Comment contains "backup" only a few of my files and folders with that comment are found. I have tried re-indexing but still Spotlight misses some files and folders. Spotlight in Tiger would find all of them. I believe in Leopard Spotlight Comments are now written in extended attributes. Can someone please try adding a Spotlight Comment to some files/folders and see if they are all found in a spotlight search. Thanks.

    biovizier wrote:
    ..."I will say that Leopard seems a lot better at keeping track of comments than Tiger was but it probably wouldn't hurt to be mindful of how files are transferred to make sure the .DS_Store file goes with it. I personally would not rely on "Comments" for anything important.
    Hmmm. It says in Leopard Help: +To make items easier to find when you search for them, you can use the Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info dialog. For example, use the field to mark all the files for a project with the project name or tag all your urgent files with the word “urgent".+
    So, Apple are saying that it certainly should work - it is called 'Spotlight Comments' after all! What I've found though is that it's unreliable. I'm trying to reorganise all my filing around metadata - having just a few 'physical' folders and using a metadata+ Smart Folder combination to do the rest. To do this requires using the Spotlight Comments field (which can be accessed via a Finder search by using 'Other ...' from the Finder's searching popup menu. So, I having been using my own 'keywords' in the Comments field, but the problem is that sometimes Spotlight finds them and sometimes not. I can have the keyword in 6 files and spotlight will find 4 of them, sometimes all of them. I've re-edited and rearranged but cannot get consistent results.
    Has anyone had a similar experience and found any pattern to what works and what doesn't?

  • Spotlight comments have vanished since Lion

    I'm astonished to find that all my Spotlight comments are missing since I upgraded to Lion. For example I have a folder called Published pdfs and the spotlight comment for each file was the name of the periodical in which it appeared. All gone. Anybody have any idea what's going on? Any similar experiences? Thanks.

    OK. The easiest way is to use the TAB key to automatically expand the file path or to use quotes
    Click on the file you want and do Command-I to see its path.
    For example
    /Users/rshs/Documents/My File.txt
    You can do a couple of things:
    $ cd "/Users/rshs/Documents/"    (you can copy straight out of the Get Info; cd = change directory)
    $ mdls M [hit the TAB key  so that it expands] etc.
    Or you can just do it from the beginning using the TAB key
    $ mdls /Us[TAB]r[TAB]d[TAB]
    etc.
    Don't type the $,
    You'll see what I mean about the tab when you try it.
    If your file name has a space, you'll need to do \ then a space, but usually the TAB key will take care of it anyway. If you get a beep, you need to type a couple of extra letters:
    cat
    coat
    c[TAB] won't do anything but ca[TAB] will expand to cat
    You can TAB to expand the commands such as
    mdls
    but you'll usually need to type the first 2 or 3 letters.

  • Spotlight comments over a network

    Hello,
    I am using spotlight comments in the GetInfo window of my files as keywords for search. Everything works fine on my computer, but as I ove the files to our server, to an archive folder, I am not able to find the files using that comments. I use both smart folders and command-F from the Finder, selecting as searching criteria "Spotlight comments" but seems that this comments are not read. I checked and the comments are still written... Do I have to activate something may be on the server? Or is something like a bug in the "find" command?
    thank you for your help.

    Hi, Maurizio. Welcome to the Discussions.
    The Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info window is actually identical to the Get Info "Comments" field in prior versions of Mac OS X. Accordingly, Spotlight Comments are saved only on your computer. Hence the Spotlight Comments are not copied to the server.
    The instructions in "Mac OS X: Get Info Comments May Not Appear for Remote Volumes" apply to Spotlight Comments as well as the old Get Info "Comments."
    Good luck!
    Dr. Smoke
    Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

  • Using spotlight comments to find files

    Hello
    I am new to this forum so please be patience with me. I would like to use keywords in the spotlight comment area to find files on our shared network. However, I am having problems with this. I can find files by name, but not by contents or spotlight comments on our shared network. Can anyone help me with this problem.
    Thanks Heather
    Message was edited by: Heather316

    To Apple Discussions!
    Check out the Article: Using Spotlight to search for items
    +"To organize your files so you can find them more easily, use the Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info dialog. For example, you could mark all the files for the same project with the project name, tag all your urgent files with the word "urgent," or enter a description that will help you find the file later.+
    +If you want to limit your search to specific locations and attributes, open Finder and choose File > Find."+
    There may be other info you can use from the Article.

  • Do Spotlight Comments Work on Folders?

    I noticed something that may just be a quirk. I've found that I can do a Spotlight search and find folders by name but I cannot find a folder by searching for a term that I've put into Spotlight comments for that folder. I seem to be able to find other files just fine by searching for Spotlight comments I've put on them, just not folders. Is this the way Spotlight works or am I just running into a strange quirk? Thanks.
    Regards,
    Steve M.

    Strange. My Spotlight comments are still on the folder as originally enterred and Spotlight hasn't been able to find it using the comments as the search term/terms. It does find the folder when I search for the folder by its actual name.
    Thanks,
    Steve M.

  • Spotlight comments disappeared

    I have a folder containing close to 300 aliases to other files in another folder. I added "Spotlight Comments" to most of them. Everything seemed to work for a long time. Recently, I cut and paste some long description text to the comment field in the info of the aliases. All of a sudden, all the comments in the folder disappeared. Other folders are fine.
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    I have a folder containing close to 300 aliases to other files in another folder. I added "Spotlight Comments" to most of them. Everything seemed to work for a long time. Recently, I cut and paste some long description text to the comment field in the info of the aliases. All of a sudden, all the comments in the folder disappeared. Other folders are fine.
    Did I cross the line somewhere and exceeded certain limit and corrupted some kind of database file for the folder? Can I recovered those comments because they consist of work that spanned over almost two years.

  • How do I make disappeared Spotlight Comments Reappear

    My spotlight comments in an entire folder have disappeared. However, the files do show up if I search in spotlight for a word which was in the comments. How do I make the comments reappear?

    Draw the sahpe as a shape, not as pixels by using the proper button on the horizontal tool settings bar for the shape tools.
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