Spotlight doesn't search Word 2008 doc(x)s

Though Spotlight doesn't have any problems searching within older Word files (all with the .doc extension), it does not search within the new Word 2008 .docx files. It does include the file names of .docx files, but doesn't seem to be able to search within the docs themselves. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you so much!

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.
floba
(MN358)

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Word 2008 doc saves into multiple docs instead of one PDF

I have installed Acrobat 9 Pro and am trying to print a Word 2008 doc to a PDF. Instead of creating and saving as one document it splits it into several whenever the page set up changes from profile to landsacape or vice versa. This happens whether I use the PDF print button or the Adobe Printer option. Any advice would be gratefully appreciated. Cheers.

I am afraid to break the news to you, this has been an on going problem with Acrobat converting Word File to PDF. Its been a problem from the get go. Adobe says, its Microsoft's Problem. Microsoft says its Adobe Problem, they both blame Apple. Problem, is Apple licenses the PDF subsystem used OSX since day one from Adobe; and, the problem existed in OS9 which didn't use PDF as the the underlying print/display engine, which tends to point the finger to Adobe. Another thing point to its adobe's problem, is that Microsoft has been waiting patiently for adobe to fix the problem since day one about 10-15 years, So they desided in Office 2008 to use their own built in Converter for PDF. This reduces the problem of breaking the pdf up only if you have a shift orientation. The problem lies in Adobe either doesn't know how or can't figure out how, or doesn't want to be bothered with finding out how microsoft Page and Section breaks work. They are unique to Microsoft.
The cure is to either use Word 2008's Save as... Command then choose PDF. In which case unless you have a chart or something that should be in Landscape mode, will make a complete PDF.
Or to take the pieces that are created by Acrobat/Distiller AdobePDF Print Drive and doe the following:
Open the first part, scroll to end
Then go to Edit menu and choose Edit menu > Insert Pages
Locate second part and choose okay or insert.
repeat 1-3 with next section
Continue doing this until all the pieces are together.
There is no way around this problem other than not using page and section breaks and not using charts or items that require viewing in Landscape orientation. Which may or may not be realistic.
If you must use items in landscape mode my suggestion would be create them separately and, then when printing, print them speparately one copy, then place the chart where you want and use a Copy machine to make the copies in the right order. Or use my direction above to insert them in proper place.

Spotlight doesn't search Stickies

I've just realised today that Spotlight can't find entries in Stickies. I have all boxes ticked in Spotlight so you'd think that Stickies being an Apple app, that it would also search in Stickies. I keep my software up-to-date, so it's not that.
I have snother notes application called PadsX - and Spotlight doesn't search that either.
Any suggestions anyone on how to make Spotlight more efficient?

Hi Irena,
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
SpiralBound is a note App that has a Search function bui;t in...
http://www.rivulus-sw.com/Rivulus/SpiralBound.html

How to fix spotlight doesn't search movies,places or bing web search?

spotlight doesn't search movies or anything bing web search, it only search file on my mac in yosemite. How can i fix this???

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.
floba
(MN358)

Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search...

Hi there!
I've got a problem with Leopard Server...
It's the first time that I run a server version.
Everything works great! But... Spotlight...
Spotlight doesn't search anything on my internal HD. On my external HD (connected with FireWire) it works!
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...
Has anybody of you an idea how to make this work?
Thanks a lot!

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".
I cannot remember any technical comment (this is pure "trial and error" on my side) that Spotlight only takes the first part of a disk name. But if two partitions on the same disk start with the same name Spotlight may run in to troubles unless one is excluded from searching ... and even a later renaming of a partition doesn't help ...
Message was edited by: OlympusUser

Spotlight doesn't search in word documents

Hello,
I have a Question regarding Spotlight: If I look for any phrase which is in word documents, Spotlight doesn't find it. (I got some documents from a friend, each about 100 pages). When I use OpenOffice and export the documents to pdf: no problem, Spotlight works perfectly.
Is there a way to force Spotlight to index this folder? I thought, Spotlight would index word documents automatically...

I found out the reason:
The *.doc documents were rtf-documents with a doc at the end. Spotlight doesn't index rtf as it seems.
Saving them as word solved the problem.

Pdfmark code in MS Word 2008 doc doesn't seem to work properly to create Named Destination

Hi all,
I've been having trouble with creating Preview-compatible Named Destinations in Acrobat 9.x (see http://forums.adobe.com/thread/770470?tstart=0). Distiller, on the other hand, appears to create compatible Destinations, so as a last-ditch effort, I tried to go back to my original source file (Microsoft Word 2008 document) to use Distiller's pdfmark functionality, to see if maybe I could finally get a PDF with Preview-compatible Destinations.
Following instructions found elsewhere on this forum, I went into Word and inserted the following field into a test location in my document:
PRINT "[ /Dest /testdest /View [ /XYZ null null null ] /DEST pdfmark"
This field code is supposed to then cause a pdfmark to be inserted into the resulting PostScript and/or PDF files. Distiller is supposed to understand this and turn it into a Named Destination called "testdest." However, it doesn't seem to work - I don't see the pdfmark code in the PS file, and the PDF file doesn't have any Named Destinations in it.
I'm using Acrobat 9.x on Mac OS X 10.6.5, so I tried this two different ways:
1) Using the "Print to Adobe PDF" workflow (which replaced the "Adobe PDF Printer" from previous OS/Acrobat versions) - this automatically generates a PDF via (presumably) an API call to Distiller... and
2) Using the "Print to Postscript" workflow to generate a PS file, which I then ran through Adobe Distiller.
In neither case did I end up with a named destination in the PDF file, as I was supposed to. In case #2, even the Postscript file didn't have a pdfmark embedded in it. Thus, I'm assuming that perhaps this is particular issue may be a problem with MS Word 2008 rather than with Acrobat... but I'm hoping someone might have a clue as to how to fix it.
I welcome ideas on how to get Word 2008 to properly output pdfmark code, so that Distiller will pick it up and properly embed a Named Destination into the PDF...
Thanks in advance.
(If anyone has ideas about the Preview-compatible problem, linked above, that would also be great!)

You're suggesting that it was never fixed from Word 2004 to 2008? Possibly. I wonder if it's fixed in Word 2011? Anyone know? But is it really a Word problem, rather than a Distiller issue?
I appreciate your offer, though I do have access to Word on Windows (2003, I think), so I could try Distilling there... I only worry about formatting, since there are minor differences (e.g. font kerning, etc.) between Mac and Windows that are subtle, but sufficient to create formatting issues for very long documents (e.g. pushing figures onto the wrong pages, etc.). That would be a rather big problem.
The question remains whether this is an issue with Word or Distiller, though... and whether it's fixed in Distiller X and/or Word 2011.
Adobe, care to comment?
I'd really love to find a proper Mac solution, if one exists... it would be rather a slap to Mac users if a solution doesn't exist.

Acrobat 9 Pro & Word 2008 doc with sections problem

I have recently switched from Windows to a MacBook Pro and am just now using Word 2008 & Acrobat 9 Pro for the Mac. I have an 11-page Word doc (created with Word XP before the change) that has several sections in it (to change page orientation). When I send that doc to the Acrobat PDF virtual printer, it creates several files corresponding to the sections in Word, but omits the first section completely. This never happened with Word XP and Acrobat 7.Is there something I missed in setting up Acrobat? Is this common with the Mac version of Acrobat?
Thanks. John.

This is a long standing issue between Acrobat (Adobe/Apple/Microsoft). Both Microsoft and Adobe Blame on Apple. But the problem has been around since Mac OS 6 days and acrobat 2-3. Back then Mac didn't even you the Abobe PDF engine for visual and printing as in OSX. Adobe refuses to fix the problem because they are not as big a fish as Microsoft. Microsft if you don't fix a problem for them it means the death of your Company. Microsoft has included a work around in 2008 . That is go to Save as... and choose PDF.
It will save as one document, Unless there is a switch in Page orientation. Microsoft both on Bulletin Boards (Forums) and on website say that the code is identical for Mac and PC version except for VBA missing, key layouts and inteface changes. But MS refuses to allow Adobe a Look at their Page and section Break codes so they can cure it.
Try saving as PDF in Word 2008 make sure version ia 12.2.1. Next see if all pieces are there.
In Acrobat and choose insert pages then choose the next section. and add to end. go to end and repeat with next section, and repeat, with next section until all the pieces are together. I wish the problem was fixed it been going on since the day Acrobat came on the scene. And the aprties are so afraid and scecretive they won't work together to fix the problem. But that business these days everyone is out for themselves, and don't care who get affected in the process.

Spotlight doesn't search imdb or bing, why?

It was mentioned that spotlight would also search the web. Well, in my case it doesn't. I have all sources checked in System settings for spotlight.
But when I search for i.e. Mel Gibson I only recieve results from my harddrive and dictionary.
Yes, I am on WiFi and connected to Internet. Running Yosemite on my MBA. I live in Sweden, but that shouldn't matter.
Anyone else had this problem and found a sollution?

Same problem but only on one share out of three.
I just setup a OS X Server (10.5.2), standard (easy) configuration. Clients are 10.5.2 as well. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
But spotlight searches are ONLY working on one out of the three shares! I tried deleting the Spotligt database (via Cocktail) and rebuilding but it didn't help.
The something strange happened! One folder on one of the non-indexed shares was indexed but nothing else. Almost as if Spotlight had done a little bit of work and then crashed. But the md-processes are still running. Strange...
I've tried looking for Spotlight log messages but haven't had any luck...
Amazing that such a central piece of OS X Server can be so hard to diagnose. After searching the forums I understand that I'm not the only one with problems.
Apple - how about user-friendly tool to verify and peek at Spotlight databases?

Spotlight Doesn't Search Servers anymore?

Spotlight used to search servers attached to my computer such as backup drives I'd mount here at work but lately no matter what you search for on the drive it can't find. It comes back empty handed. What is the story here? is it a bug or something else i'm not aware of?
Any help would be great

Same problem but only on one share out of three.
I just setup a OS X Server (10.5.2), standard (easy) configuration. Clients are 10.5.2 as well. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
But spotlight searches are ONLY working on one out of the three shares! I tried deleting the Spotligt database (via Cocktail) and rebuilding but it didn't help.
The something strange happened! One folder on one of the non-indexed shares was indexed but nothing else. Almost as if Spotlight had done a little bit of work and then crashed. But the md-processes are still running. Strange...
I've tried looking for Spotlight log messages but haven't had any luck...
Amazing that such a central piece of OS X Server can be so hard to diagnose. After searching the forums I understand that I'm not the only one with problems.
Apple - how about user-friendly tool to verify and peek at Spotlight databases?

Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

Leopard's Spotlight isn't searching email messages. I made a clean install of 10.5, and have two POP accounts. The message files are right there under ~/Library/Mail/... . I rebuilt the index for the system volume by adding and then removing the volume from the Privacy zone in Spotlight preferences. I also tried some of the command-line suggestions posted elsewhere for this problem. I recently added my backup volume to the privacy zone, but other than that the zone is empty.
But the problem remains. Outside Mail.app, Spotlight never comes back with search results that are mail messages. Inside Mail.app, searching "entire message" returns 0 results. Does anyone know how to diagnose this problem? Can I see if a particular file is included in the metadata index?

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:
find ~/Library/Mail -name "*.emlx" -exec mdimport {} \;
This searches for the individual message (*.emlx) files themselves and throws them one by one onto the mdimporter which imports them just fine. Still, a plain mdimport ~/Library/Mail would not work which pointed me in the right direction: Spotlight did not "see" these individual message files. But Why?
I fiddled a bit with file/folder permissions since I also simply upgraded from Tiger and ended up with old Tiger permission based user accounts. No result. I discovered, that in Finder the mailboxes, say ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox etc. were displayed as package files instead of folders. Strange. So again I tried mdimport -d1 ~/Library/Mail now with a bit of debugging. Aha! Spotlight imports this folder as type 'dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45mr3wgn8a', or similar, a dynamic UTI, instead of with 'com.apple.mail.mbox' as what it should have been. Since this unknown dynamic UTI dosn't mean anything sensible to Spotlight, it would simply skip the folder, not scanning it's contents with the well known result that mails cannot be searched by content.
So, what is essentially overwriting these UTIs? Especially because this would not happen in another Leopard-created user account. I felt guilty as I added some custom UTIs in the past, but nothing to do with mail at all. So who carries UTIs for Mail.app? Well... Mail.app! Another Mail.app? YES! I remembered, that I had an older complete pre-Spotlight system backup on my current system, including all applications including Mail.app in version 1.3.something. AFAIK only with Mail 2.0 Apple changed the way Mail saves messages and they apparently also changed the UTI of .mbox to the new format. I simply deleted the old version of Mail.app. Immediately after that the icons of the .mbox changed and I could open these folders in Finder. I tried again mdimport ~/Library/Mail and - boom - Spotlight imported all my mails!
Long story to explain my thoughts, here are 5 steps for you to try:
1. Search your system to find out if you have multiple different copies of Mail.app. You can do that with Spotlight/Finder or enter in the terminal:
sudo find / -type d -name "Mail.app" -ls
(You need to be admin to sudo, type your password when prompted)
2. Locate and check the found versions of Mail.app in Finder via the get info window.
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!
Note: If you did find and delete old versions of Mail.app, but step 4 did not work, you might have to log out and in or you can even try to restart the machine. In my case the result was instant. If all of that did not work for you - sorry - but probably the above helps you to track your particular problem down.
ecke

Spotlight Doesn't Search Online

Following the upgrade to Yosemite Spotlight no longer searches online so i have to open Safari first and search in the browser bar. Is this a bug or am I nut using Spotlight or its settings correctly?
Thanks
Duncan

Hello there duncal,
If I understand correctly performing a search in Spotlight does not show any web searches at all. It seems to me that the Bing Web Searches is unchecked in the Spotlight preferences.
Spotlight preferences - Mac Help
To open Spotlight preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
Search Results pane
Choose which categories appear in Spotlight search results: Select the categories you want to include, deselect those you don’t.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Regards,
Sterling

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

10.7 Lion Spotlight doesn't search for dollar sign ($) anymore?

Ok, I just upgraded my work laptop to Lion 10.7.2 and I'm having serious issues with spotlight and finder. It seems you can no longer use the dollar sign ($) as a search operator?!?!
I'm a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner user and have very few paper documents. This includes scanning all of my receipts and naming them with the total at the end.
So if I had a receipt that was for $5.35, the end of the filename would include "... $5.35".
If I try to find the file via spotlight and search for "$5.35" nothing comes up...
If I search for "5.35", the receipt comes up.
Euros (€) searches correctly, but not the dollar sign...
What is going on here? This is seriously hampering my productivity and saved searches!
Anytone else having this issue? Google didn't seem to turn up any results and I can't be the only one seeing this behavior!?

Steven,
I haven't been able to solve it in Spotlight, but I did come across an application that does index and search properly. It's called "Found".
You can download it from the Mac App Store.
https://www.foundapp.com/

IPhone spotlight doesn't search job titles for contacts

I think this is so strange that you can't find a contact in your iPhone by searching for job title. Is there a way to turn this on somehow? Some setting I'm missing?
I'm imagining the bathroom sink springing a major leak:
"Honey! Grab the iPhone and call the plumber!"
"What's his name?"
"I can't remember right now! There's water spraying everywhere! Just search for plumber and you'll find him..."
Not gonna find him. Enjoy your leak.
Seems like a strange oversight. Spotlight on the computer at least brings up a couple of matches.
Weird. No?

Obviously the more fields that are searched the slower the search will be, but I would really like it to search all fields even if it does take longer...
My 10 year old Handspring Prism smartphone did it
What fields to search could be a selectable feature within the OS.
I've submitted a suggestion as well...

Spotlight doesn't search Word 2008 doc(x)s

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