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.
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.

Similar Messages

Spotlight Comments Disappear

I have never been able to save spotlight comments. Never. Over years and years. I'm trying to organize some files by comment. The comment appears. Turn off the computer. Turn on, GONE. Does this function simply not work?

I have had something similar happen. But, the data still seems to be there. I can't find the solution either.
In Terminal.app, "mdls (FILE)" shows the comments in the kMDItemFinderComment field; and, Spotlight search still finds the files as well. Unfortunately, if you make any change to the comment block in Finder, the old data disappears and it is replaced with whatever you have typed.

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

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.
Mylenium

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.

Spotlight Comments Location

Hi. I added spotlight comments to a .mp4 file and moved the file to an external hard drive, but those comments disappeared.
Where are the spotlight comments stored so that I can find them?

In detail, this is what happens:
1. I right-click the file and click "Get Info"
2. I add a comment in Spotlight Comments
3. I move the file to an external hard drive
4. I click "Get Info" for the file that I just moved, and the comments are still there
5. I eject the external hard drive
6. I plug in the external hard drive
7. I click "Get Info" on the file, and the comments are no longer there

Spotlight's blind spot: Spotlight comments on Disk Utility disk images.

Has anyone but me noticed that Spotlight goes blind to Spotlight Comments once the files are moved into a 256-bit encrypted read/write disck image created with Disk Utility? I don't have iPhoto, and I keep photos in too many categories for that anyway. I keep all my keywords in Spotlight comments in Finder attached to each file and create "albums" on the fly with Spotlight searches.
But as soon as I moved the whole mess into a read/write 256-bit encrypted disk image created with "from folder" in Disk Utility....I can still see all the comments in Finder GetInfo, but Spotlight can't. I even tried adding comments to the search field list and it still sees nothing, not even when the disk image is mounted and visible in my Finder window sidebar.
What am I missing?

Yes, I search while the drive is mounted.
Yes, I can drag it into and out of Spotlight's Privacy Pref's Pane. While it's in there the entire drive obviously disappears from Spotlight's searches. Once I - it from the exclude list it returns to seeing folder names only, but still finds nothing based on Spotlight Comments.
I'm starting to think Apple left that bit of code out. Anybody know how to put it back in?

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:
1 - if not in the file itself, where are the Spotlight Comments actually stored? If they're in a folder's .DS_Store files, then they would disappear if you nuke those files (like when trying to fix a folder that is not properly displaying its contents) and that has not been my experience. I know that you can use mdls in the Terminal to show the comment and the other useful stuff that appears in Get Info's More Info field, but can this data get separated from the file it is connected to, or is it in that mystical Resource Fork? I'm not a developer (JavaScript is about as much code as I can handle) so I don't need the gory details. I just want to know if we can nuke Comments by unintentionally deleting some invisible file.
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.

Spotlight comments - max length?

Is there a maximum number of characters that can be in a Spotlight comment entered in a Get Info window, or perhaps are there forbidden characters?
I have a bunch of images that I've downloaded and pasted a description into the Spotlight comments. Now it's been several days and when I tried a search that yielded no results I realized that the Spotlight comments for these files are now empty.
A search here yielded a similar problem where comments disappeared and the solution offered was to run in Terminal "mdimport -n (FILENAME)". This did nothing for our missing comments.
Can anyone suggest what my be going on and hopefully a reasonable solution?
Message was edited by: Notary Sojak

Hello,
Check this out: Organize files with Spotlight comments
And here: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008443.html
Carolyn

How to copy a files spotlight comments for an entire folder and place them in a different file with that same name

I have the same question in a different discussion but I already marked it as solved because one of the questions was answered. Here's the linke to the other discussion if your interested https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5970421
I have movie covers saved as a jpeg for every movie my family and I own. There is about 700 and they each have a comment of the main actors, release dates, and descriptions. This makes it easy to find what to watch.Is there an applescript, automator, program I can download, or program code supported in xcode that will do the following set of inscructions?
Take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it to a movie file's comments to a file with the same name but obviously has different extention. For an example
In a Pictures folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.jpeg       Comment: (2008) Genre: Action...             <- copy comment
In a Movie Folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.m4v       Comment:                                               <- paste
and do this for all 700 files

Clendenen02 wrote:
where should I run the code? in the terminal, or an applescript, or should put it in xcode and run it from there or the terminal.
What MrHoffman said.
But if it's easier, you can wrap it in Automator and have Automator ask for the Folders: (Test on a sample of your files before running on all 700 files)
(do you really own 700 movies??)
The Workflow is:
Put this in the Run Shell Script Action (and pass input as arguments":
PicDir=$1
MovDir=$2
for f in $PicDir/*
do
     if [ ! -d "$f" -a "${f##*.}" = "jpeg" ]; then
          comment=$(mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment "$f")
          if [[ $comment != "(null)" ]]; then
               picname=${f##*/}
               movname=${picname%.*}.m4v
               if [[ -e "$MovDir"/$movname ]]; then
osascript <<-EOF
tell application "Finder"
set comment of file (POSIX file "$MovDir/$movname") to "$comment"
end tell
EOF
               fi
          fi
     fi
done
(BTW, I know that this is a bit of sloppy scripting (wraping an osascript in a Bash Script wrapped in Automator, but it does what you need)

Importing Spotlight Comments

Hi Everyone,
I have around 700 historic photos that have been digitized. All the photo details (dates, etc.) were entered into the Spotlight Comments field under Get Info. Unfortunately, none of the comments appear when I open the photos in Adobe Bridge CS4. I will now start using Bridge to add the metadata tags. However, is there an easy solution (perhaps an Automator script) to export the Spotlight Comments and use them in Bridge? I really don't want to retype the information, and I would be extremely grateful for any advice.
Thank you,
Brian

You most probably require the help of script to do this. Better to ask your Question in that forum. Your Spotlight Comments belong to Finder both AppleScript & Shell can get access to these not too sure about JavaScript. JavaScript would be required to add this info to the correct files.

Automator for Exporting Spotlight Comments?

Hello,
I have around 700 historic photos that have been digitized. All the photo details (dates, etc.) were entered into the Spotlight Comments field under Get Info. Unfortunately, none of the comments appear when I open the photos in Adobe Bridge CS4. Is there an easy solution (perhaps an Automator script) to export the Spotlight Comments and use them elsewhere?
Thank you,
Brian

Brian
If I read you right, what you are trying to do is grab Finder metadata and convert it to photo metadata. Specifically, convert spotlight comments to Exif and IPTC - which is what a Photo app will need.
You can't do this with Automator. The Automator dictionary has ways to set Spotlight Comments but I can see no way to get them. Further the dictionary has the ability to write to the IPTC data only of images in Aperture, not in the Finder or iPhoto.
You might do better with that question on the Automator forum here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1261
Have you tried the Applescript that was suggested when you posted the query last?
As your target are file managed by Bridge, give the Adobe forums a go too.
However, you may run into another issue here and that is that most scanners (as I presume this is how the photos were digitised) do not create Exif and IPTC data for scanned images. It may not be possible to do what you want to do.
Regards
TD

Is it possible to export Spotlight Comments? Please help.

Hello,
I have around 700 historic photos that have been digitized. All the photo details (dates, etc.) were entered into the Spotlight Comments field under Get Info. Unfortunately, none of the comments appear when I open the photos in Adobe Bridge CS4. Is there an easy solution to export the Spotlight Comments and use them elsewhere?
Thank you,
Brian

I found this AppleScript on Google. I cannot vouch for it: I have never tried it and it is several years old. It appears to use GraphicConverter. But you can experiment with it, and see if it works for you.
[http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-76368.html]

How to copy a files name and spotlight comments to a text file for an entire folder

I have movie covers saved as a jpeg for every movie my family and I own. There is about 700 and they each have a comment of the main actors, release dates, and descriptions. This makes it easy to find what to watch. I want my parents to have all of this info but they have a windows laptop so the comments don't transfer with the file and can't be searched like you can on a mac. Is there an applescript, automator, program I can download, or program code supported in xcode that will do at least one of the following things?
1)Take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it into a text document like word that looks like this...
File Name1- Spotlight Comment for file 1
File Name 2- Spotlight Comment for file 2
. for all 700 files in a folder
2) It would be equally helpful if there was something that would take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it to a movie file's comments with the same name but obviously has different extention. For an example
In a Pictures folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.jpeg       Comment: (2008) Genre: Action...             <- copy comment
In a Movie Folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.m4v       Comment:                                               <- paste
and do this for all 700 files
3) Is there a free photo program that works on mac and windows that I can put all my movie pictures in and have a description like I did with the comments? It would also need a place that to search the description for keywords. So Basically an itunes for pictures that works on both mac and windows. If so I still need a way to get the spotlight comments to the description.
4) I feel like this would make things more difficult, but if not I can put all of the .m4v files in itunes so instead of pasting all the comments back into a file in finder paste them in a description in itunes
5) At the very least a code that I can run one by one for every file that will paste the comments into the same document
Note: When I say spotlight comments I mean the comment box that is available when you click on get info of a file. The pictures are in the pictures section of finder in a folder called Movie Pictures. The movie files are on an external hard-drive in a file called Movies. Also I am slightly familiar with applescript and automater in that I have used both to create keyboard shortcuts and simple voice commands. I have programmed in c++ and C too. So If you give me a code for applescript I do know what to do with it.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read all of this and extra thanks to anyone who tries to help.

Clendenen02 wrote:
2) It would be equally helpful if there was something that would take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it to a movie file's comments with the same name but obviously has different extention. For an example
In a Pictures folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.jpeg       Comment: (2008) Genre: Action...             <- copy comment
In a Movie Folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.m4v       Comment:                                               <- paste
and do this for all 700 files
This Bash script will do it.
Edit "PicDir" and "MovDir" to the location of your Folders
(Note: The comment is written to the m4v file using xattr, so the Spotlight comment field appears blank in Finder, but the comment metadata is still indexed by Spotlight (If you add a Spotlight comment from Finder, it is stored both as an extended attribute and in a .DS_Store file)
#!/bin/bash
PicDir=$HOME/Desktop/Pictures
MovDir=$HOME/Desktop/Movies
for f in $PicDir/*
do
     if [ ! -d "$f" -a "${f##*.}" == "jpeg" ]; then
          comment=$(mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment "$f")
          if [[ $comment != "(null)" ]]; then
               picname=${f##*/}
               movname=${picname%.*}.m4v
               if [ -e "$MovDir"/$movname ]; then
                     xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment "\"$comment\"" "$MovDir"/$movname
               fi
          fi
     fi
done

Problem with add Spotlight Comments script.

Hello,
I am trying to add Spotlight Comments to some files using Automator. I have made an very simple script in Automator that add Spotlight Comments to the files that I have selected in Finder. I save this script as an app and it work great. I also save the same script but not as an app but as a service. The problem here is that when I run the service it add the same Spotlight Comment two times. For example, if I add "@Webshots" with the app the Spotlight Comments of the files is "@Webshots" but when I do it with the service the Spotlight Comments of the files is "@Webshots" "@Webshots". Can anybody help me with this? I will appreciate it a lot any help that you could give me. Thanks

I suspect your workflow includes 'get select finder items' as the first action. get rid of it. it's redundant in a service that accepts files and folder in finder. that's why everything happens twice.

Spotlight comments disappeared

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