Spotlight doesn't search iPhoto for included data, such as titles!!!

This is a complaint I had about iPhoto 6 too. If you use spotlight and type in a word, spotlight will NOT return any pictures from iPhoto. It does not mine the iPhoto data such as photo titles, descriptions, film roll or event titles or keywords. It only looks at the file name brought in when it was first imported into iPhoto.
Any ideas on why the guys at Apple can't figure out how to get to the data in their own programs? This problem has continued to exist for too long.

Lots of times I need to find a photo within Finder, like when uploading to a blog and such.
Of course, that's not supported, you know. And part of not supporting it is that the OS doesn't help you do it.
There are three ways (at least) to get files from the iPhoto Window.
1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
To upload to MySpace or any site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. If you're using Gmail you can use THIS
If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser. Or, if you want to access the files with iPhoto not running, then create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use THIS
Regards
TD

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Hello arnoota,
for me Spotlight's content search works for docx, too. Are the info in your signature correct? If so you should install the 10.5.4 update of Leopard! At least for 10.5.3 some changes concerning Spotlight are documented by Apple, so probably this issue got fixed as well with one of these two updates.
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Hi there!
I've got a problem with Leopard Server...
It's the first time that I run a server version.
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I already deleted the .Spotlight Folder on my startup disk... But that doesn't help... I added my HD to the "privacy" Tab in Spotlight and deleted it after that... But that doesn't help, too...
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I got to Spotlight to search and index my internal harddisk again.
I rebuilt the .Spotlight-V100 folder including the subfolder which I copied from a working (searchable external harddisk) which I initially deleted in my trial to get Spotlight working again.
After a lot of tinkering with mdutil, Cocktail (a superb OS X system utility) and the Spotlight preference panel the overal problem for Spotlight might have been that I have got the internal and the Windows partition named starting the same name "Aristoteles" then a "blank" and the "HD" on the OS X partition and "WinXP" on the Windows partition. Obviously that got Spotlight confused because when I specifically excluded the windows partition (using the Spotlight preferences panel) and reactivated the remaining OS X partition using the "sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Internal" command (I renamed the OS X disk partition from "Aristoteles" to "Internal") ... bang Spotlight kicked in ... but the strange thing is that Spotlight kicked in telling me it is searching the OS X partition "Aristoteles" instead of "Internal".
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Message was edited by: OlympusUser

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A few ways to do it...
http://guides.macrumors.com/Addingfiletypes_toSpotlight
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060729190236629&mode=print
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005052015041510
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Hello arnoota,
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Hahaaaa! Solved it - at least for me...
Please read the whole explanation first before just gabbing any presented commands and executing them in the Terminal. The solution requires no Terminal.
I had exactly the same problem described by MikeW and JJ. I tried everything like you before at no avail, too. But I tried one more thing that did work and indexed all my mail. Here is what I did at the command line. Don't type the command right away. It will work, but this is not the root cause of your problem, I present it just to explain:
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3. Delete all but the actual copy of Mail.app in /Applications from your system (empty trash!).
4. Enter the following line in the terminal to have Spotlight import your messages:
mdimport ~/Library/Mail
Should take much longer now, depending on the number of mails you have.
5. Check the result by searching mail content in Mail/Finder/Spotlight, enjoy!
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ecke

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Spotlight preferences - Mac Help
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Search Results pane
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Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
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Spotlight doesn't search iPhoto for included data, such as titles!!!

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