Spotlight fails to find folders

On a new iMac running 10.7.2 with two separate disks (SSD for Lion and apps and hard drive for user data) I have trouble to kick Spotlight into finding folders when searching by name. Spotlight indexed the hard drive twice but searches for folders by name for instance "lab" won't bring up any results, same for "lab folder" - only a search for "lab kind:folder" finally brings up the looked after folder. On a Macbook Air also running 10.7.2 I don't have this problem. What's wrong here? Is this a bug in Spotlight related to having user data on the secondary disk...?

Same here. I'd think that this is a bug. Did you file a bug report?

Similar Messages

Spotlight fails to find files & folders

Spotlight frequently fails to find files or folders that I have created on my user. Some files and folders will show up, but perversely never the ones I want. For example, I wanted to locate a folder I have entitled "Business Card", so I entered "Business" into spotlight. I got a couple of "business" hits on my documents, and a whole slew of system ones and mail messages, but I had to shuffle manually through my files until I found it. And this kind of thing is happening all the time, to the point where I have virtually written off Spotlight.
I have all the options in the preferences list checked, and have placed files and folders at the top of the list.
Any thoughts as to why this is happening?
Thanks.

Spotlight is notorious for its weaknesses and erratic behavior. You might try reindexing your Spotlight. Open up Spotlight in Sys Prefs, go to Privacy and drag the HD Folder there. Leave it a minute then remove it by clicking on the minus at the bottom. This will force Spotlight to reindex the drive, which may take some time.
I mostly use EasyFind (free) instead of Spotlight.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/

Spotlight fails to find existing files

?- why should spotlight sometimes fail to find files that are already on drives attached to our fileserver?
Is there anything I can do to 'force' a rigorous search?

Spotlight is notorious for its weaknesses and erratic behavior. You might try reindexing your Spotlight. Open up Spotlight in Sys Prefs, go to Privacy and drag the HD Folder there. Leave it a minute then remove it by clicking on the minus at the bottom. This will force Spotlight to reindex the drive, which may take some time.
I mostly use EasyFind (free) instead of Spotlight.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/

Spotlight fails to find files with search items

I just did a Spotlight search on
Japanese English は
Spotlight found more than 3500 items, but the two sample Word files I looked at didn't have は in them.
This is really frustrating. Is there a way to ensure Spotlight only finds files with the input?

Spotlight is notorious for its weaknesses and erratic behavior. You might try reindexing your Spotlight. Open up Spotlight in Sys Prefs, go to Privacy and drag the HD Folder there. Leave it a minute then remove it by clicking on the minus at the bottom. This will force Spotlight to reindex the drive, which may take some time.
I mostly use EasyFind (free) instead of Spotlight.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/

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 has stopped working properly. Even when a known file is entered (with full file name) in search, it fails to find it. Any ideas?

Spotlight has stopped working properly. Even when a known file is entered (with full file name) in search, it fails to find it. It finds some things, but is not to be depended upon. Any ideas?

Try reindexing spotlight: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support
If you still have problems, open Console app, select All Messages, then search for mds in the search field. Then search for mdworker. See if there are any messages indicating it is having problems with certain files.
You can also delete the index altogether and cause it to reindex with a command in Terminal. I have always assumed the method above will do the same, but I'm not certain. You must run this command while logged into an admin account. Copy the whole line and paste it into Terminal.
sudo mdutil -E /
sudo temporarily elevates your privileges and will ask for your password. When you type it in, there won't be any response in the Terminal. Just type it and hit return.

Spotlight indexes and then doesn't find folders. Need boolean folder search by name.

I have re-indexed (via adding and removing from the list at " ▹ System Preferences ▹ Spotlight ▹ Privacy") an external HD twice, and still Spotlight fails to return positive hits on many Finder folders. (I've even watched the indexing progress in the status bar that shows in the Spotlight HUD in Yosemite.)
EasyFind, the free program from the makers of the DevonThink family of products, finds them.
The external drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I have used it for a few years. Less than 1/5 full. It is a FW800 drive connected via an Apple FW<—>Thunderbolt adapter.
OS 10.10. MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013).
Suggestions?
Bonus: what I need to do is search and rename thousands of folders containing tens of thousands of files. In order to do this efficiently, I need to perform boolean searches on folder names. (These searches are straightforward: "Contains X and Y; Contains X and not Y; and, if available, Starts with X and contains Y.) EasyFind allows boolean searches of file _content_ but not (quizzically) file or folder names. Suggestions?
Thanks.
—Kirby.

(Sorry — could not figure out how to edit my OP.)
I should have mentioned that both Spotlight and Finder's search have the exact same problem. (As I understand the OS, this is expected, as Finder uses the Spotlight indices.)

I upgraded to Mavericks from 10.6.8 and I no longer have any of my mail folders in macmail. If I look up an email via spotlight, I can find it, so it's in there. How do I restore my folders?

I upgraded to Mavericks from 10.6.8 and I no longer have any of my mail folders in macmail. If I look up an email via spotlight, I can find it, so it's in there. How do I restore my folders?

As an update: I was able to find my archived boxes and emails on my hard drive by doing this:
Open a Finder window.
Select Go | Go to Folder… from the menu.
Type "~/Library/Mail/V2".
Once I was able to get my macmail working properly, most of my mailboxes appeared, however not all and only a few recent emails are in a few of the boxes.
I really need to move the emails from the archive back into my macmail. When I try to import using the mbox method, it doesn't recognize the .mbox even though they are .mbox. Other than re-emailing each individually to myself, I don't know what to do. Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to some easier solution?

Spotlight does not find files with "_" (underscores), but only for certain file types

Hey Folks,
this is strange, maybe someone has an idea.
I already searched the internet for a while, nothing found so far.
I have a file "calc_mean.m" on my desktop.
When I type "calc" in spotlight, it shows the file.
But when I type "calc_" it suddenly does not show the file anymore. Nor does find the file, when I enter "calc_mean.m" in spotlight.
When I enter "calc mean.m" in spotlight, it finds it (using space instead of the underscore).
Now comes the real surprise:
When I rename the file to "calc_mean.txt", spotlight suddenly DOES find the file when entering "calc_mean.txt".
I recreated this "feature" with other files, copying and renaming ".txt" files to ".m" files, and if there's a underscore in the file, spotlight wont find it.
Playing around a bit more, it seems spotlight does find files with underscore when they are documents, at least it works for the following extensions:
.pdf
.doc
.txt
.xls
But these extensions for example do not work:
.mp3
.m
.k
.a
.ka
(and other random endings I tried).
I am pretty confused. Sure it's no big deal learning to search for files that include underscores in their name using space instead. But I'm still quite puzzled. Any idea?

All of those have meaning in various database search syntax (not sure if it matters).
_ usually means any character.
% usually means any run of characters.
- is often used to negate what comes next, i.e. "don't include results that have the following text."
I don't see any problem on my Mac, though.
I also don't have any problem finding file names with those accented characters using Spotlight. I would suggest reindexing Spotlight, but if cmd-f finds them, I'm not sure that would help.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Spotlight fails to search at HFS drive in optibay

Hello
Recently i noticed that Spotlight behaviour is very strange - it fails to find some files in the folder, while other files from the same folder are found easily. Examples are shown on the pics.
in first case it fails finding ''Empire of the sun'' folder, while folder ''Metronomy'' is found. In second case it finds folder ''Aquarius heaven ***" while fails to find its parent folder - ''ELECTRONIC''
Indexing is on, i also reindexed that drive, but it doesn't help.
need help very much, as all my music is on that drive and i can't find anything(

I had to re-index after Spotlight completed it's upgrade indexing.
sudo mdutil -E /
or drag your HDD into Spotlight privacy pane and then remove. Indexing will start up and a new data store will be created.
This solved my partial search issues. Unless, of course, you just need to be patient.

Spotlight missing files and folders?

Spotlight consistently misses certain files and entire folders, which I can find by rummaging through my finder, but can't find by searching in Spotlight. No these are not hidden files or library folders. Yes I have checked my privacy settings and used the privacy options to re-index spotlight. Why would Spotlight miss certain folders? Does it only search to a certain depth? How can I get Spotlight to search these folders?

Step 1
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -F '$Time $Message' -k Sender mdworker -o -k Message Rne Norm -k Sender mds | tail | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear.
The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.
Step 2
Enter the following command as in Step 1 and post the output:
mdutil -as 2>&- | pbcopy
You can then quit Terminal.
Step 3
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Terminal. In the Console window, look under the heading DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION on the left for crash reports related to Spotlight. If you don't see that heading, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar. A Spotlight crash report has a name beginning in "mds" or "mdworker" and ending in ".crash". Select the most recent such report, if any, from the System and User subcategories and post the entire contents—the text, please, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)
Please don’t post any other kind of diagnostic report, such as hang logs—they're very long and not helpful.

Fails to find files that exist, fails to search everywhere

Running OSX 10.4.3 on a Powerbook G4 1.5gHz and on a PowerMac G4/867.
I hope it is because I am doing something wrong, but so far I am very unimpressed with Spotlight, for the following reasons:
•It fails to find files that are known to exist. For example, I have an application named MacTracker. It is in my Applications folder. When I enter
tracker
in the search field,
(with location set as wide as "computer" or as narrow as "Applications", with or without a "name contains" restriction) Spotlight will not show MacTracker as existing, even though I can see it with my own eyes, in the Applications folder window in the background. Only if I search on
Mactracker
will Spotlight see the application. This seems ridiculous to me. Any search, especially a "name contains" search, ought to show MacTracker if I search on track, tracker, actra, mactrac, etc. But, no. I have to enter "MacTracker" if I want it found.
•I make use of OSX Mail only occasionally. For most of my e-mail, I use a Unix mail handler known as PINE. PINE stores incoming and outgoing mail as plain text files in /users/me/mail . However, Spotlight refuses to include that location in its searches. I have tried using the Spotlight preferences to add
/mail to the list of specific places to search; no luck, Spotlight appears completely blind to anything outside of the locations Apple arbitrarily decided I needed to be able to search in.
Can anyone offer any ideas on how to make Spotlight work for me, instead of against me?
Thanks in advance.
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

same problem here. the only answer i can find is....spotlight buh-lows. does anyone know if we can just revert to ye olden way of searching? simple things like: searching actually find the stuff you're searching for. and: list of items found arrangeable by date/alphabetically (just like any normal window in osx). also, is hitting apple-f essentially just bringing up spotlight in its own window, or does this search function differ at all? sorry to hijack the thread, but we suffer from the same problems. thank you!
pb12 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Spotlight do not find pictures in iphoto 11

I have notised that Spotlight does not find the pictures in iphoto 11. I'm running Lion 10.7.2. Solutions?

Well, perhaps Spotlight doesn't understand the iPhoto database with the tags and stuff (which it did in older versions). But it does understand the file package. It's just a package of files and folders after all.
If I create a new iPhoto library and import a couple of pictures, then in the Finder show the new iPhoto library package content and search for "jpg" and click on "new iPhoto Library" it returns a lot of hits, since it's indeed full of jpg files. The problem is that if I do the exact same thing with the old iPhoto library package - it returns zero hits.
Does it have to do with the iPhoto library moving from one disk to another, migrating? I don't know the answer, but it's really irritating. And I'm hoping someone knows the magic trick out there to fix it once and for all.

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.

I get this message when I try to update Evernote in the Appstore on the Macbook: ConnectionManager::invoke::Failed to find service connection url.

I have no problems in connecting to the appstore on my iphone or in iTunes. Just in the Appstore on my Macbook I get this message (ConnectionManager::invoke::Failed to find service connection url.)

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Select "/var/log/install.log" from the file list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar. Then select the messages from the last installation or update attempt, starting from the time when you initiated it. If you're not sure when that was, start over and note the time. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.

Spotlight fails to find folders

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for