Spotlight / Finder Find catchup

I understand that Spotlight creates a cache to speed up searches and I assume the Finder menu Find uses that cache as well.
My question is that the cache cannot always be 100% up-to-date, correct? And so, when searching for something, it might take a few minutes/seconds, so how do you know when the search is complete?

Thank you Terence. For the record, I find it confusing that the window states "Searching xxx" because it sounds like it is performing a search, not that it has completed the search, which led to my question. Got it now.

Similar Messages

Spotlight/Finder can't find a file, yet when I search the timecapsule for they find it. If I try to restore the file I get "file with that name already exists...." What is wrong?

I was trying to find a file (iTunes Backup). When using finder/Spotlight they couldn't find the file.
I then opened up my timecapsule and searched for the file....tick-a-de-da it found it in yesterdays backup. I attempted to restore the file and got the prompt "A file with that name already exists in this location, would you like to keep both, replace the file or cancel the request.
So if the file is there why can't spotlight/finder find the file??
If it helps I get this from the terminal when checking if indexing was enabled.
$ mdutil -s -a
Indexing enabled.
/Volumes/Data:
2014-11-18 18:09:39.542 mdutil[1472:572531] Metadata.framework [Error]: mdsCopyStoreAttributes failed: (8) (os/kern) no access
No index.
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups:
Indexing and searching disabled.
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb:
Indexing enabled.

Hi Danielle,
Is there any possibilty that some of your files (a VI or DLL?) have been moved, renamed, or deleted? Also, what version of LabVIEW are you using and are you using any .NET DLLs? Another option to consider would involve VISA or DAQmx property nodes. Are you using any of these property nodes in your code? Here is a KnowledgeBase article to describe more about the VISA and DAQmx property nodes in a source distribution:
Error Creating Source Distributions Involving rc Files: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/833BFD5E9CA0224886257584004DAA4C?OpenDocument
I hope this is able to help.
Anna L
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Spotlight Find Window has incorrect arrangement

Lately, whenever I use Spotlight and then choose "Show All", the resulting window is displayed (in list view) with a very wide sidebar, and very narrow columns which must be expanded to read the fields. Normal new Finder windows open correctly, in column view, with the sidebar and columns all readable without adjustment. Under View Options, with the Search window as the foremost window, the checkbox "Always Open in List View" is not checked, however the window always opens in List View.
This problem with the Spotlight Find window has only occurred recently and no attempt to fix it has been successful. How and where do I specify the format of the Spotlight window so that I may specify it as it used to be?

If the problem doesn't exist in other accounts, then there's further corruption within the original one. While logged into the newly created admin account, backup the bad account's folder, delete the bad account, selecting the save data option (which is stored in /Users/Deleted Users/ as a disk image), recreate the bad account using the same username/password combo, log out and back into the recreated original account. If the problem's solved, open the saved data dmg file in /Users/Deleted Users/, open the /Library/Preferences/ folder from the saved data, open the current /Users/restored account/Library/Preferences/ folder, and slowly copy plist files from the saved data folder to the current one that don't exist in it. Log out and back in to ensure there's no conflict and things still work correctly. Resolving conflicts or identifying corrupt plist files is a laborious process. Good luck.

Installed 7.5 now Spotlight/Finder won't load...cannot access any folders!

Installed the 7.5 update last night. After it rebooted my MacBook spotlight/finder won't load & continually error. Any ideas? As of now, the only way I can access my hard drive is via terminal in the leopard boot disk.

Had to boot from Leopard DVD...run terminal...delete iTunes & QuickTime (to get rid of current versions)...reinstall Leopard (which loaded the downgraded versions of iTunes & QuickTime). Finder/Spotlight now works.

Leopard spotlight finds always the same false positives

leopard spotlight finds always the same false positives, with any keyword. How fix this if I don't want to exclude the folders from search?

never mind-the files/folders were dated Jan 1, 1970. saved them new and erased the old ones.
Message was edited by: schmunzelmonster

IPhoto + Spotlight + Finder: Importing and Exporting

IPhoto has been really buggy for me lately (even after I recreated my iPhoto library from scratch), so I like to export from iPhoto frequently to the Finder for manual storage.
Lately, I've wanted to add keywords to all of my photos with people and place information. Just as a test, I exported a few photos to the finder (by dragging from iPhoto to the desktop) and found that it doesn't do what I intended with the keywords established in iPhoto. Instead of retaining the iPhoto keywords in the "Spotlight comments" it strips them off completely! Also, if I create any spotlight comments in the finder, iPhoto does not import them as keywords! Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I thought this would be a cool integration.
Question: Is there any way to retain keywords on my photos when copying between iPhoto and the finder?

Colin:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. iPhoto doesn't strip the keywords from the photos because the keywords are kept in a db file in iPhoto and are not physically added to the image file. The image management application that can do that is one that I use, iView MediaPro. You can sync a number of meta data fields back to the file with it so when you open those files with another application that can read those files they are there.
When you use iView to catalog an iPhoto Library folder it creates keyword fields in the catalog file for those keywords and assigns them, in the catalog only at that time, to those photos. It also creates "Catalog Sets" of albums. Then you can select all photos with one keyword and sync that keyword back to the original file. You can use both applications on the iPhoto Library folder but only with great care because if you make a mistake you'll trash the library for iPhoto.
Hope this has been of some help. Good luck.
OT

Spotlight/Finder Doesn't Search In ASP and other file types?

.asp and .c file types are nothing more than .txt files with different extentions..
Am I correct in thinking that Spotlight doesn't search inside these files? I have a folder full of asp files and spotlight doesn't seem to find anything when I type text that I know is inside one (as a test)
It does appear to search INSIDE .html files in the same folder.. Can you add different file extentions that spotlight will search into?
If not, then "Spotlight" is much ado about nothing as google desktop search, X1 and the msn desktop search (Windows) released years ago search inside ALL files..
Signed,
Curious Switcher
Wayne Bienek
Mac Pro 3Ghz / 4GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.8) 30" Cinema Display + 20 " Cinema Display

Spotlight makes a content index for files using mdimporter, and that process depends on mdimporter modules for the specific file type. Thus in /Library/Spotlight you will see a collection, such as Microsoft Office.mdimporter, of "extras" for special file types. There are also the built-in ones in /System/Library/Spotlight. If you installed Xcode/Developer Tools, there should be a SourceCode.mdimporter, which I imagine would index the asp and c files. If not, some people have modified it to also index php files, see this discussion:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050514182520714&query=spotlight%2 Bphp%2Bfiles
at MacOSXHints. I think you could do something similar (at your own risk of course) for other pure text based files. Be sure to expand the the replies and read them.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Spotlight/Finder only searching "new" spotlight comments not old ones

I have a bunch of files on my external hard drive that I had taken several hours to "tag" with spotlight comments a few months back. I tagged them so I could quickly find them in Finder or Spotlight by different key words and not just file names or their contents (folders wouldn't work because the keywords overlapped many of the files. Plus folders are slow). It worked beautifully. Until I stopped adding tags for those 4 months until now.
I hadn't been using my comments at all in the past couple of months, but i had some files that I hadn't tagged so I decided to take the time to tag all the new ones. While testing to see if the comments worked, I noticed an extreme shortage of results, compared to the results i had for the same key words 4 months ago. I noticed that only the newly tagged files were showing up. I immediately checked the old files to see if the comments were still there and there they were. I restarted my MacBook Pro, thinking that maybe it was because I hadn't done so in the past few days. I noticed the little dot in the lens of they eyeglass and thought "oh boy! it'll reindex everything!" but it only indexed "new" files of course.
So my question is: "*How did this happen?*" But more importantly: "*+How can I fix it?+*"
I've thought that forcing spotlight to reindex my entire external hard drive would do the trick, but I cannot find any means to achieve that goal. Plus, I would rather just be able to index the files within one folder as I wouldn't have to wait an entire day of sluggish performance for that. Any ideas?

Let me start with the "easy" question first: the .DS_Store files are where "Finder information" is stored. Windows users find these things a pain in neck, and usually insist they be deleted. Most of time this isn't a problem, the Mac users just get annoyed when their folder doesn't open the way it was when last closed--the principle information stored there is the view the folder was told to keep, the size of the icons and their arrangement, and so on. Every time you open a folder a .DS_Store file created if one does not already exist, and if one does the file will be updated if you change your settings for the folder, for instance switch it to List view, tell it to always open in List view, with columns for Date Modified, Size, but not Kind or Date Created. And it also keeps the information entered in Spotlight Comments. Just how Finder preserves this information if a file is moved, in Mac OS, to another folder, I don't know. But it does.
What we REALLY need is a nice little program to write to the metadata of the file. For instance, Spotlight will index keywords, which are stored in the file itself, as part of the file's metadata. I mainly work with graphics, and Photoshop allows you to add keywords to the file's metadata. Apple's iPhoto and Aperture will also add keywords, but they are not written to a file's metadata until you export them. PDFs can also have keywords assigned, you can even do it with Preview. Text documents can also have keywords added using some (most?) text editors, including TextEdit (provided the file is in RTF format). The nice thing about keyword metadata is that it goes with the file, and be accessed in any OS that allows a metadata search.
Unfortunately I don't know of any program that would allow you to select a batch of miscellaneous files and add the same keyword to all of them. It would certainly be handy though.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Spotlight (& Find) window keeps refreshing

When I search in Spotlight or open a Finder window and put something in the Search box, the windows will start to get populated, then clear out and refresh instead of just resorting. Does this about every 5-10 seconds.
I don't believe it used to do this.
Any way to keep it from doing this?

Not answered...

Why does spotlight find files & folders that i've deleted?

i have several external drives connected to my g4/os 10.3.9 housing my music collection
when i connect them to my intel mac mini/ os 10.4.10 and delete a file or folder it still shows up if i search for it in spotlight (or using the search in the top right of the finder window). it shows up with a blank icon, uses zero k, does not give any location, is "read only", and if you double-click it a message comes up saying that it is an alias and the original can no longer be found. it then gives me 3 options "delete", "fix alias" or "ok". none of these achieve anything.
any ideas? it is annoying as it makes searching for anything really annoying as half of the results are these meaningless "aliases". this problem only occurs with files & folders originally created on the drives by my g4/ 10.3.9
if i create and delete a file or folder on the drive from my mac mini it behaves as normal (ie: once deleted it isn't found by searching.
aaaagh!!! help!

is there a way to force tiger to build an index for this drive? there was in panther (under disk info...you could see whether it was indexed, and start indexing if it wasn't) - couldn't see it in tiger (only had a quick look)

Spotlight/Finder Search not finding files in search

Hello everyone,
When I do a search for a file, any file or folder in fact, that exists in any of the system folders or the /library and user/library folders, they NEVER appear in the search results.
Could someone please explain to me, for example, why a simple seacrh, say for example, for a folder called "Desktop Pictures" which can be found in MacOS X/Library, never shows up in the search result. Is it just my mac that has this problem?
I look forward to any responses volunteered!
thanks!
SB

As baltwo eventually explained, you have to add the search criteria "System files" to your search, with the option "Include" selected, to find many items Spotlight otherwise excludes from search results. Alternately (& quite ridiculously), if your search is restricted to the parent folder containing the item, you don't need to add this.
For example, if you open /Library in the Finder, enter "Desktop Pictures" in the search box, you won't get it in the results with the default "This Mac" location, but if you click "Library" for the location, you will. (Yes, many users think this is bizarre, "what were they thinking?" behavior.)
What Spotlight considers "system files" is only slightly less bizarre, as you will probably discover once you start using it to broaden searches. For instance, Safari history items & Mail.app messages are not found unless you include system files, but many files like C Header Source files (in System/Library/Frameworks) are found without including system files in the search.
When it was introduced in Tiger, Spotlight was supposed to be a next-generation search engine, capable of accurately guessing what you were looking for (& filtering out what you weren't) with near-sentient intelligence. I think almost anyone who used that version will agree it did not achieve that lofty goal. Apple apparently agreed, or at least listened to the complaints enough to realize it needed rethinking. Unfortunately, what its designers came up with for the Leopard rethink feels like an early beta version, full of hastily implemented, quirky features that never got sorted out before it was released.
We can only hope that we won't have to wait for OS 10.6 for a more mature, less quirky version.

HT2531 How can Spotlight find a file in the Library (in an app's plugin folder)?

I'm writing a plugin for SketchUp that lives in SketchUp's plugins folder in the system Library. Even when I put an alias of the plugins folder out on the desktop, Spotlight can't seem to find it (my plugin file). I've learned the trick of using the option key to reveal the Library folder in the Go menu, but why does the file remain 'hidden' from Spotlight after I've drug an alias of its folder out to the desktop?
I also tried using Terminal to patch Hidden to NoHidden without reliable results. Yuck.
Thanks for any help you can offer,
John Trotter

To view system and hidden files, use the Finder (cmd-F) to find.
From the criteria popup menu, select Other...
From that list that pops up, find System Files and Visibility; check both so they stay in the menu.
When searching for system files or hidden files, use those criteria.

Emails vanished - although Spotlight finds them

Even after rebuilding each & every mailbox, there are emails that seem to have disappeared - although I can find them with Spotlight & open them in Mail.app by clicking at the Spotlight search results. The vanished mail opens - everything is fine. I close it - and it's gone again, only to be found again by Spotlight, not by Mail.app.
What else could I do?
Thanks a lot
Peter

Sorry - another rebuild worked!

Spotlight: finding items in Finder in SL list?

How do you determine the path of a file found in Spotlight to where the file lives on your computer? All I get is a list of files, I can open them by clicking them from the SL list, but unlike using a Finder Window where by selecting a file in a list, the path shows up in the bottom of the window.
Does SL allow you to see a path to a file in it's list of find results?
Thx,
Steven

Hi baltwo,
I searched Sys Prefs > Spotlight and only see the items to check or uncheck you want searched, and what drives you want to exclude. Nothing about a "Show Path Bar" anywhere to be found.
I did a faux search in the right hand SL field and there is nothing like what you're suggesting there either. All I see is
Show in Finder at the top, and SL Prefs at the bottom which takes me back to Sys Prefs.
If I choose Show in Finder, then I get a Finder Window and then I can scroll to the file I'm looking for and THEN I get the path at the bottom of the Finder window. But that's pretty clunky and doesn't sound like what you're talking about. Or is it?
Finder window if I select "Show All in Finder"
Path is above, but not in a SL view, in a Finder view. Is that what you meant?
Thx,
Steven

Shouldn't Spotlight find this???

I have about three folders on my HD (all in my user folder) with the name Kathy Ruth in the title. I type Kathy Ruth into the Spotlight search in the menu bar. OK, it finds two folders and one alias. But I KNOW there are at least three folders with that in the name. So I choose Show All from the Spotlight menubar. I click File Name in the Search window that comes up. Still only shows two folders and one alias. So I manually drill down in the Finder and sure enough, I find the third folder with Kathy Ruth in the title (called Kathy Ruth - copy). OK, if I COPY Kathy Ruth - copy from the folder and paste it into Spotlight, it STILL doesn't find the folder!!!
This is not the first time this has happened to me. Why does Spotlight often fail to find some files?

try re-indexing your computer.
open system preferences > spotlight
click on the privacy tab
click on the + sign, and add your Macintosh HD
now click on the - sign to remove it, and your system should start indexing.
(the magnifying glass will animate when doing an initial index)

Spotlight / Finder Find catchup

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