Spotlight doesn't find invisible files in Yosemite

Spotlight, under Yosemite 10.10.2, does not find invisible files, even when specifically requested to do it. The results window is empty.
Besides that, the insible property has disappeared from the Finder information windows:

Open System Preferences > Spotlight. Under the 'privacy' tab, drag your HD into the list from a Finder window. As soon as it's in the list, remove it.
Spotlight will now begin to reindex your entire HD. You'll see a dot in the middle of the spotlight icon and clicking the icon will tell you that it's re-indexing.
Regards,

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Under Yosemite Spotlight doesn´t find my files

Under Yosemite Spotlight doesn´t find my files on the computer and connected hard drives. What can I do?

Try re-indexing Spotlight.
Spotlight – Re-index
See if you can find the file using this program
EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

Spotlight doesn't find html files

I'm a web developer. I have thousands of ".html" files, such as "india.html"
Spotlight won't find them.
It does find "india.cfm" files so I'll assume the problem is the html extension.
If I Show All in Finder it does them ... in a Find window section called "Developer" ... which doesn't appear in Spotlight, or is a choice in Spotlight Preferences.
This used to work. I'm now using 10.9.5. I don't know at which update it stopped working ... I don't perform this often but when I do it's critical.
I've repaired permissions and reindexed the drive (twice, by adding and removing the drive from Spotlight index preferences).
Thanks.

A test...
Made a plain text file, saved to desktop, apple.html. Spotlight doesn't find it. Duplicated it. Change the name to apple.txt. Spotlight immediately finds it.
Spotlight is having a problem with html.
Checked the Spotlight RichText.mdimporter and it has:
<array>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>MDImporter</string>
<key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
<array>
<string>public.rtf</string>
<string>public.html</string>
<string>public.xml</string>
<string>public.plain-text</string>
<string>com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text</string>
<string>com.apple.rtfd</string>
<string>com.apple.webarchive</string>
<string>org.oasis-open.opendocument.text</string>
<string>org.openxmlformats.wordprocessingml.document</string>
</array>
</dict>
</array>
... so that's in there...

Spotlight doesn't find a file it should

When i do 'grep strahler *' in my ~/Mail directory, i find one file. However, when i search for "strahler" using spotlight, it doesn't turn it up (it finds lots of other files, but not that one).
How could that be?
[my trust in spotlight is in tatters -- i thought it finds everything]
Best regards,
Gabriel.

< wonder what apple has to say about that ...
spotlight seems to be one of their selling points for the mac, doesn't it?>
Unfortunately, after a year of yelping and squealing and countless emails from users, directly to Apple, asking them to fix Spotlight, Apple so far has had nothing to say. I suggest you add an email of your own, to Apple Support, as apparently nobody (who matters) at Apple ever reads these forums.
Spotlight, and Dashboard, were the two new "features" that, about a year ago, persuaded people that Tiger was better than Panther.
It isn't.

Spotlight doesn't find all files.

Hi guys,
i just installed Snow leopard on my old iMac that was running tiger before. With tiger i never had troubles like this and the same files im looking for now were always found. However spotlight doesn't seem to find them now. They are located in HD/library/.... anything in there cant be found and i didnt enable privacy for it.
After i moved one application out of there and dragged it on the desktop it was instantly found. Doesn't seem like a big deal since i know where the app is and i have it in the dock anyways, the problem just is that i am looking for other files that im not sure anymore if they are on the computer and if spotlight just doesnt find them it would take me a lot of time searching for them manually.
My question is, besides if you have a solution to fix this, if its due to snow leopard. Does it not look in the library anymore?
Thanks in advance folks,
P.S. i already re-indexed.

Spotlight does not search system folders by default. See,
Get Spotlight to search system files (and more)
Enter the search term in the Finder window's search field.
Click the [+] button in the search bar to add a search option.
In the first drop down menu choose Other.
Choose “System Files” from the list that pops up (and check the box to place in drop down menu to avoid this step later,) click on the OK button.
Now back in the Finder choose Include from the second drop down menu.

Spotlight doesn't find files after Time Machine re-load

So I just got a new macbook pro and transferred everything from my old laptop onto it using Time Machine, which worked amazingly ... only weird thing now is when i search in the Finder Search bar or in Spotlight, it doesn't find any files that were on my old computer. I can find them manually, for example, I can be looking at a file called "house-info.rtf" in my Documents folder, but if i search "house" or even "house-info" it comes up with 0 results.
Any new file (I've made or downloaded on my new machine) comes up fine in the search, it's just files from my previous computer moved over via time machine...
any ideas?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Time Machine does not save Spotlight's index, so your drive has to be re-indexed. It may be that it just hasn't "caught up" yet. Give it some time.
If you're pretty sure it just hasn't done it, you can usually get Spotlight to re-index by excluding your internal HD from Spotlight (System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy) for a few moments, then removing the exclusion. That should make it start over.

TM: Spotlight Won't Find Deleted File

As a test, I created a file just before TM began an hourly backup. After the backup was completed, I deleted the file.
When I open finder and search for the file using spotlight, of course it doesn't find it. When i call up the TM display and click the arrows, it still doesn't find it. In fact, spotlight won't find the file in TM at all. But because I know the exact time and date of the backup that has that file, I can navigate to the exact directory and find it. The file is there, and it only exists in that one backup.
So TM is working, but this isn't exactly the most convenient if you've deleted a file a month ago, have no idea when it was backed up, and can't remember where it was located.
I've tried it with the TM drive both in and out of the spotlight privacy pane--doesn't seem to make any difference. Known issue?

Hmmm, it sounds like Spotlight's DB is corrupt or not functioning properly.
Might give a try with Spotless...
http://www.fixamac.net/software/spot/
For finding files by name you might like one of these...
EasyFind...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076
Or Find Any File...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30079/find-any-file

When i want to download the test version of CC, creative cloud doesn't find the file. Always search

When i want to download the test version of CC, creative cloud doesn't find the file. Always searching, what do i do?

Hi clemdef,
Change your browser and try again. Please refer the kb: http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/troubleshoot-cc-installation-download.html for download issues.
You may even try the direct download: http://prodesigntools.com/adobe-cc-direct-download-links.html .
Kindly follow the very important instructions before download.
Regards,
Romit Sinha

Spotlight doesn't find search results in .HTML file contents

When I use Spotlight to search, it doesn't find any .HTML file contents. If I rename an .HTML file to use a .TXT extension, the contents are found. Is there a way to enable Spotlight to find contents in .HTML files?

I remembered that used to be problem, so I just checked on my local version of my site, and Spotlight found the files on the basis of content without a problem. So I took a look at my installed mdimporters in /Library/Spotlight, to see what may have led to this happy turn of events. I thought perhaps the iWeb mdimporter might be doing it, but was unable to find a reference to HTML in its type declarations. I then took a look at in /System/Library/Spotlight and discovered that RichText.mdimporter has a declaration for public.html as a content type. You should have that mdimporter installed by default, but you might take a look to make sure it is there.
If the mdimporter is there, but the html files aren't being indexed, it could be that whatever program you are using to create them isn't giving them the appropriate content type. I code by hand using TextEdit, which saves them with the following metadata entry:
kMDItemContentType = "public.html"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"public.html",
"public.text",
"public.data",
"public.item",
"public.content"
They are then evidently indexed without problem by the RichText.mdimporter. You might try opening one of your html docs in TextEdit (as plain text), resave, and see if Spotlight then picks up the content of the file. Of course, the content means the words that people see when they look at the page in a browser. If the content you are talking about is stuff that is inside an html tag, you are out of luck. I know of NO way to get Spotlight to find that. EasyFind will though, but it is a brute force search and will take awhile, even when restricted to a particular folder.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Spotlight doesn't find the contents of at least one file

Goal - find a clever way to discover what Spotlight has (or hasn't indexed).
I have an xls spreadsheet that has the names and emails addresses of people who attended a recent course of mine. In the past few weeks I need to search precisely which course someone attended. The person had a unique last name and so I just put the name into
spotlight. Nothing found. A few minutes of digging manually confirmed the person had attended the course I expected.
Related discoveries
none of the contents of that file is indexed by Spotlight - tested by searching other names
older xls files in the same folder are correctly indexed
Searching on the filename finds the file so the file itself is found by spotlight
Copy the column of names to a temp spreadsheet, save them and search - file find
Rebuilding the index from scratch warmed my CPU but didn't change anything
I've checked the simple spotlight preferences - xls spreadsheets aren't ignored
Since I don't know why its getting missed I'm concerned that other files might not get indexed properly as well.

I would suspect a corrupt file. It may be just damaged enough to stop Spotlight reading it properly.
If you select the file in the Finder and hit the space bar does it open in Quick Look? If it doesn't then it is broken.
Try opening it in Excel and copying and pasting everything into a new file.

Spotlight doesn't find files

I know there are two files on my hard drive called prefs.js. They are in my users library.
Why can't Spotlight find them?

mamanogabriel wrote:
It might be really late to answers this, but is better late than never. I am also frustrated with this (dis)hability to search in Mac. Apple prefers to do money selling songs and games rather to fix something that all the people asume works from the start.
Searching for your file names that YOU know they exists is quiet a problem.
Option A) Re index your hard drive. Look for the spotlight preferences and click on the "Privacy" tab. Then drag in your entire hard drive. Then, remove your hard disk clicking on the minus sign. Close your preferences. This will reindex your files into spotlight. After finishing reindexing, do your search again.
Option B) Do a simple search doing cmd+F. By default you will see little tabs below the Search title. Mine shows KIND is ANY. Click on the KIND tab and choose OTHER at the bottom, there it will appear a huge range of criteria to add for your searches. You might be able to look even into sysntem files.
Option D) (Recommended) Forget about Apple at all! Download this free app called EasyFind It is in the Freeware section (http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html) This app looks EVERYWHERE. I been using this for years. It can even look for invisible files. Hope this helps.
What happened to Option C??????
I paid for a copy of Find Any File, as suggested by seventy one.

Cannot find invisible files or folders any more

Find or Spotlight used to be able to find invisible or hidden files, folders, etc. This is key for some purposes.
Now it doesn't work. I can list hidden files or folders in terminal, but cannot find them at all using Spotlight, even when I know they are there. For example, searching for Name Contains private AND Visibility is Visible or Invisible returns nothing, even though ls -a returns private/ as one of the folders at root level.
Does anyone have an explanation for this change in behavior, or a fix? Using a utility like TinkerTool is not a satisfactory workaround, because searching still fails even when hidden files are shown in the finder.

Hi, j.e.s.
First, we need to define hidden and invisible files, as they are distinct:
• A hidden file is one whose file name begins with a period (.) . Example: a file named ".hidden" would not show up in Finder. This is a UNIX® standard.
• An invisible file has its invisible file-system attribute enabled.
A file can be both hidden and invisible, e.g. its name begins with a period and its invisible file-system attribute enabled.
Now, as to searching for these with Spotlight:
• By default, Spotlight neither indexes nor searches either hidden or invisible files.
• The Find criterion for Visibility does not work. Find under Tiger is implemented in Spotlight. That the Visibility criterion does not work extends beyond the facts that Spotlight does not index hidden or invisible files nor will it search (with the exception of Raw Queries using criteria based solely on file system metadata) outside of its index. The function simply does not work. Even using a raw query to search for invisible files, when compared to using the Spotlight mdfind Terminal command, produces inconsistent results.
I have an entire appendix in the Tiger Edition of my book — from the info above is provided — that demonstrates all of these anomalies with Spotlight concerning searching for hidden and invisible files.
Your best bet for searching for hidden or invisible files under Tiger is to use EasyFind.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Spotlight doesn't find

I'm searching for OmniWeb folders.
Spotlight finds
~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb 5
nothing else.
EasyFind finds
/private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/OmniWeb-<username>-1
/Applications/OmniWeb/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/OmniWeb.nib
~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb 5
~/Library/Caches/OmniWeb
~/Library/Caches/com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5
Spotless is completely useless if your intention is to do some developing. mdimport, mdutil, SpotlightIndexer, searching by filename in the Finder's Find window and other methods don't help, Spotlight cannot find by filename. It finds something and something not.
Since Spotlight finds apps by name, it's usable on my machine only as a kind of launcher.
Apple, please give us the bug fix! We are waiting since April 2005.
PowerBook G4 1.67 15" (late 2005) 1.5/120 GB Mac OS X (10.4.9) iPod mini 6GB

Hi Terence
I wrote before that SpotlightIndexer doesn't help. I did index *anything* /Users /Library /System /private /sbin /usr /automount /bin /cores etc. etc. and dozens of subfolders to be sure they will be indexed - nothing.
It's a bug because SL promises to find but it will not find.
Another bug is that SL gives the option to find invisible items but it never will find invisible items.
Enabling the Finder's Search (by disabling SL indexing) allows to find items by filename (much slower than Panther) as it should be and as it was possible in all previous Mac OSs.
Regards
Andreas
PowerBook G4 1.67 15" (late 2005) 1.5/120 GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) iPod mini 6GB

ARD 3 doesn't find a file that exists in Report...File Search

I am trying to gather files with the Report...File Search tool. The files exist on the computers but ARD doesn't find them. I can search for another file in the same folder as the one I am actually looking for, and ARD finds it. If I use the Finder's search on the remote computer, the file is found.
Any suggestion?
Thank you for your help.

The file search cache must be up to date for this to work properly. Usually this cache is only updated once a day depending on your cache settings.
If the machines are Tiger machines, use the spotlight search instead.

Search in finder doesn't find my files in OS 10.8, upgrade from snow Leopard to Mountain Lion

after i upgraded from snow leopard to mountain lion . when i try too search files on finder . it does not find any of them although all the files are still there .so i need scroll up and down for few minutes to find my file manually . what could be the problem ?? anyone can help me with this .. thanks in advance

Hmm... didn't help me. But, I'm glad to know that I can "refresh" the search profiles. That may come in handy in the future.
I'm having similar problems where I can see a file from within an application, but the file doesn't show up in a Finder search. The file I see in the application also isn't visible in that application's folder (where it's supposed to be stored, in this case).
The file exists, because I'm able to work on it from within the application. However, it can't be found on the computer by any means I have available. I've spoken with the manufacturer of the software and they told me where to look for the file, but it isn't there (as far as I can see). Of course, they suggest the Finder is "broken" and needs to be fixed. I don't think that's the case. I can easily find other files without difficulty.
Could what I'm looking for be a "hidden" file?

Spotlight doesn't find invisible files in Yosemite

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