Spotlight finds some files, not others

Hey Apple, Spotlight not only fails to work as advertised, it's essentially useless. A search tool that cannot be relied on is a search tool that is not worth using at all. Your failure to make this vaunted "feature" work by version 10.4.3 is really a black mark on the Apple brand.
Here's my experience:
1. Upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3. Process was long but went smoothly. New OS is snappier and has several welcome new features.
2. Experimented with Spotlight. It quickly found text buried in Word and other documents. Stellar.
3. Spotlight did not find text inside Wordperfect documents. This did not surprise me because I don't have Wordperfect on my system, so these files were unreadable.
4. Converted the Wordperfect files to Word, saved them, opened them and closed them. Spotlight still did not find text in these files.
5. Created a new Word file. Spotlight did not find EITHER the name of the file or the text inside it.
6. Used Onyx to re-index Spotlight. No improvement. Turned computer off and back on a couple times. Still no improvement.
Note: I have not made any changed to the Privacy setting or anything else, other than to re-order the display of Spotlight's results. Do not have any third-party system software or utilities besides Onyx, and this problem occurred before I even installed Onyx. Also have never fiddled with the command line.
Any tips? And any idea when Apple will get its act together? This is a real shame. Apple should be embarrassed.
-- Disappointed Mac user.

Hey Apple, Spotlight not only fails to work as
advertised, it's essentially useless. A search tool
that cannot be relied on is a search tool that is not
worth using at all. Your failure to make this vaunted
"feature" work by version 10.4.3 is really a black
mark on the Apple brand.
Here's my experience:
1. Upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3. Process was long
but went smoothly. New OS is snappier and has several
welcome new features.
2. Experimented with Spotlight. It quickly found text
buried in Word and other documents. Stellar.
3. Spotlight did not find text inside Wordperfect
documents. This did not surprise me because I don't
have Wordperfect on my system, so these files were
unreadable.
4. Converted the Wordperfect files to Word, saved
them, opened them and closed them. Spotlight still
did not find text in these files.
5. Created a new Word file. Spotlight did not find
EITHER the name of the file or the text inside it.
6. Used Onyx to re-index Spotlight. No improvement.
Turned computer off and back on a couple times. Still
no improvement.
Note: I have not made any changed to the Privacy
setting or anything else, other than to re-order the
display of Spotlight's results. Do not have any
third-party system software or utilities besides
Onyx, and this problem occurred before I even
installed Onyx. Also have never fiddled with the
command line.
Any tips? And any idea when Apple will get its act
together? This is a real shame. Apple should be
embarrassed.
-- Disappointed Mac user.
Update:
I re-indexed Spotlight by marking then unmarking my Macintosh HD as Private in Spotlight Preferences. Spotlight then found the name and contents of the Word file I created after upgrading to Tiger. Who knows why it didn't find this file the first time I re-indexed.
Spotlight continued to ignore all content of the files that I converted from Wordperfect to Word -- until I opened each file and saved them using the "save as" command. Then Spotlight worked.

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Keynote 09 opens some files, not others

I'm running Snow Leopard and iWork 09. I have several very important Keynote presentations that I dearly need to access. While Keynote will open some of the past files, it will not open several of these critical files. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hey Apple, Spotlight not only fails to work as
advertised, it's essentially useless. A search tool
that cannot be relied on is a search tool that is not
worth using at all. Your failure to make this vaunted
"feature" work by version 10.4.3 is really a black
mark on the Apple brand.
Here's my experience:
1. Upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3. Process was long
but went smoothly. New OS is snappier and has several
welcome new features.
2. Experimented with Spotlight. It quickly found text
buried in Word and other documents. Stellar.
3. Spotlight did not find text inside Wordperfect
documents. This did not surprise me because I don't
have Wordperfect on my system, so these files were
unreadable.
4. Converted the Wordperfect files to Word, saved
them, opened them and closed them. Spotlight still
did not find text in these files.
5. Created a new Word file. Spotlight did not find
EITHER the name of the file or the text inside it.
6. Used Onyx to re-index Spotlight. No improvement.
Turned computer off and back on a couple times. Still
no improvement.
Note: I have not made any changed to the Privacy
setting or anything else, other than to re-order the
display of Spotlight's results. Do not have any
third-party system software or utilities besides
Onyx, and this problem occurred before I even
installed Onyx. Also have never fiddled with the
command line.
Any tips? And any idea when Apple will get its act
together? This is a real shame. Apple should be
embarrassed.
-- Disappointed Mac user.
Update:
I re-indexed Spotlight by marking then unmarking my Macintosh HD as Private in Spotlight Preferences. Spotlight then found the name and contents of the Word file I created after upgrading to Tiger. Who knows why it didn't find this file the first time I re-indexed.
Spotlight continued to ignore all content of the files that I converted from Wordperfect to Word -- until I opened each file and saved them using the "save as" command. Then Spotlight worked.

OCR works without issue on some files, not others?

Acrobat 10.1.1
While working with converting presentation slides to OCR and exporting them I am only able to get some PDFs to properly OCR. I am using the same process though it seems it simply won't take on some while it does others.
Tools > Recognize Text > In this file > (Default settings) Ok
and yet I get different outcomes.
Is it possible that background colors/type color/font etc. are conflicting with the OCR process? Again keep in mind these are presentation slides that have been converted into PDFs that I am attempting to OCR for export into Word.
Thanks.

Most of the time you would not be able to OCR such documents because they are not pure graphics. OCR in Acrobat can only be done on pure graphics. If there is else on the page, OCR will not work. A work around is to save the document as a TIFF and then import all the TIFF files produced into a new PDF and run OCR on that. Be careful to use a high enough resolution, the other aspect than can cause OCR to fail (there is a minimum resolution -- 200 or 300 dpi).

DVD SP can't find some files-won't start

When I try to open a major DVD SP 3 project, which worked last week, DVD SP states that it cannot find some files and that the project cannot open without them: "The movie file "Sequence 1-FIN-00000005" cannot be found. Without this file, the movie cannot play properly." I have to Force Quit DVD SP and cannot open the project. Other files complained about include 1-FIN-0000003b
Since I last opened the project, one of my external Firewire hard drives has failed - it will not switch on or run up or mount. That HD contained the scratch for FCE from which the movies (.mov) files for the DVD SP project were created.
Could it be that some of the movies that DVD SP can't find are Reference Movies which rely on a Sequence in one of the FCE projects on the faulty disc, which would explain whey DVD SP can't find them?
If so, how do I recover from this? The originating FCE scratch disc is lost, being on the failed HD. How can I force DVD SP to open the DVD SP project and THEN complain? That would allow me to delete the missing movies, recapture the shots from my camera into FCE, run the FCE project (which is on my internal HD), output the movies again but as stand-alone movies, and reinsert them in DVD SP's Assets and rescue the project. As it is, I cannot even identify the movies that DVD SP complains about
Help! A serious problem.

SOLVED! I can now get the project to upen by tricking DVD SP into finding that the files are MISSING rather than that they are REFERENCE MOVIES which cannot find their "parent" Final Cut Sequence. Here's how:
Examine all the QT movies that the troublesome DVD SP project needs acces to (they will be in your Media folder). Open each movie and if QuickTime can't display any of them by reporting that it cannot find a file called something like "Abcde - FIN-0000008", that means that the movie is a reference movie, which means that it depends on the Sequence in your Final Cut project file which created that reference movie. That is perhaps because the Final Cut project file or its sequence has been deleted; or (in my case) the relevant Capture Scratch hard drive is kaput.
For each such reference QT file, add an "x" (or something) to the file name in your media folder. (A clue about which QT files are reference movies is an unexpectedly small file size.) Changing the file names like that will result in DVD SP failing to find any trace of them them, one after the other, but this time it will continue to open the DVD SP project file until it displays a box listing the missing file names. Press "Continue" and the DVD SP project file will complete the opening process. In other words, DVD SP will refuse to open a project that needs REFERENCE movies which lack their parent sequences, but will eventually open a project with MISSING OR WRONGLY NAMED movies. You should then re-create the movies as non-reference ones, perhaps after re-creating your Final Cut project or re-capturing the shots from your camera.
This is an important discovery for anyone who has inadvertently created reference movies and lost his/her Final Cut Project File or Capture Scratch. Without it, you will loose your DVD SP project and many earlier versions of it. So, never check the box called "Make reference movie" when creating a movie from Final cut.
Whew!
However, I think that it is bad programming on Apple's part to create a situation when a file has to be abandoned unecessarily like that. DVD SP should treat orphan reference movies like it treats missing movies and just complain and get on with the job of opening. It's like my car refusing to move for ever more because, just once, a door wasn't properly shut!
I can't think why I did not keep a backup external HD for my Capture Scratch. I've got one now!

Disc Burner. Why are some files not readable or writeable?

Hello,
I am trying to backup my friends computer files on a beige G3 (233 MHz). I am burning about 6 DVDs of AIF music files. Most of the files are about 30 - 40 Megs in size. Often I receive error messages on particular files that read:
"The operation cannot be completed because some data cannot be read or written.
(Error code - 36)"
Followed by the choices: "Stop" or "Continue".
I have a bad feeling that my startup disk is too small but I am not sure.
Most of the files work fine. However some of the files cause disc burner to not be able to use them in the disc image before I burn. Why would this be?
Here are the specifications:
Computer: beige G3 with two hard drives (one SCSI and one ATA hard drive) and a Pioneer DVR-110D DVD writer which is Apple supported (Apple system profiler indicates Apple supported on this DVD writer). My blank DVD disks are Sony Vermatim DVD-R (1 - 16x speed support). Although I think my beige G3 only writes them at about 2 or 4x.
I am using OS 10.1.5. My startup disk which has OS 10.1.5 in it is a 4 GIG SCSI disk. Is this big enough for a startup disk (for creating 4.5 GIG DVDs)? My files are on the second hard drive which is a 40 GIG ATA disk.
I have a bad feeling that my OSX startup drive is too small for disk burning - it is only 4 GIGs in total and OSX Disc burner (Disc copy) is first making a disk image on my startup volume before it burns it. Perhaps that disk image is too large for the startup volume. Is there any way I could ask OSX to put this disk image on the second larger hard drive instead (not the startup drive?).
Here is my process (I hope I am doing this right - I am new at this):
1. I first insert a blank DVD-R
2. A message pops up asking my if I would like to create a blank disc image for this disk (I think this is the typical Disk Copy utility window. I say "yes" and give it a name and choose the "DVD-R or DVD-RAM" option. (I am not sure if there are other important settings to choose here or better settings to use but I guessed the other options that seemed obvious. A blank disk image is created with an icon that looks like a DVD disk.
3. Then I drag my chosen files to this blank disc image. It takes about 30 minutes to copy over. Thats when I receive the error message that some files couldn't be "read or written". The other files work fine but it would be nice if they all worked.
Why would some files not be readable or writeable?
4. Then I choose file/burn in the top menu and the DVD is created. This takes another 20 - 30 minutes. At the very end of the process another message pops up saying:
"Sorry the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occured (error code -28)" Followed by an "OK" button.
However all the files that made it onto the final DVD are fine - its just that its not all of the ones I originally chose in the first step when dragging to create the disk image.
Am I doing this the right way?
Why are some files not "readable or writeable" as it indicates in the error message?
Is my 4 GIG startup disk too small for this? or are the music files possibly corrupt? or could there be some other possible problem?
Thanks

To follow up, I have some good news. After following your advice Kappy, it now works very well Thanks! Instead of using the 4 GIG volume for the OS, I am now using an 8 GIG partition on an 80 GIG drive. So now the OS has some room to operate. No disk errors occured on my first DVD
Now there was one problem. The second DVD burned gave me an error. I am not sure why but I am going to guess that because I had to installed the OS onto an 8 GIG partition maybe the OS needs to be rebooted in between disk burns because although 8 GIGs is certainly greater than the 4 GIGs I gave it last time, it still isn't a lot of space - maybe just enough to do one DVD at a time. Thats only a guess. So I rebooted to see if that clears the system out ready for the next DVD and I am trying to burn the second DVD again. If I remember I will report back. In any case, yes, this seems to be working. I hope this second DVD burns well too.
Thanks Kappy

Hi, I migrated from PC to Mac, but I can't find some files I had in the PC, this files were invisible but just before migrating I switched off the "hidden" option, ¿Does this files migrated as hidden files or they didn't migrated?

Hi, I migrated from PC to Mac, but I can't find some files I had in the PC, this files were invisible because I had them as hidden but just before migrating I switched off the "hidden" option, ¿Does this files migrated as hidden files or they didn't migrated?

If the filename starts with a dot (.thisfile), then it will be hidden on the Mac.
You can use a 3rd party App, such as EasyFind to search for the file on your Mac, and then re-name (remove the dot)

Open in Camera raw grayed out for some tifs not others, bridge

I searched but could not find a solution. CSR. PC. Windows xp. In CS4 Bridge the option to open with Camera raw is grayed out in the file menu for some tifs and not others - It shows up grayed out on the file menu, but doesn't show at all when right clicking, even with the files where open with camera raw is not grayed out in the file menu. I have purged the cache, deleted all temp files, closed both bridge and photoshop and still I cannot open the tif in camera raw. It is grayed out. If I go to the pic I touched up yesterday the option is not grayed out. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

RJ Dougall wrote:
My intent is to batch process in Camera Raw -- my preferences have always been set to use camera raw for TIF and JPG files, and I have never had a problem accessing Camera Raw either directly in PhotoShop itself, or Bridge.
Please e-mail me a copy of your response to [email protected]
Uh, this is a forum...not an email tech support organization...
As for your issue, it's simply not clear what you are doing or what issue you have. Can you not open the scanned images via Camera Raw from within Bridge? If you can then you will need to go through each image and adjust the ACR settings before you would be able to process them. Depending on how you set up your actions, Photoshop's Batch may or may not catch settings...that part is pretty complicated.
Also, I would question your use of JPEGs vs TIFFs. I would suggest scanning as 16 bit TIFF and running those through Camera Raw...you will be loosing a lot to scan into 8 bit JPEG and then re-running through Camera Raw. You really want to be sending ACR 16 bit images...

Visual Studio 2012 Find in Files not Displaying Files

Maybe I am doing something wrong but all of a sudden the Find in Files in my VS2012 does not display the actual file results. It displays the count but the file list is empty.. Am I missing something?
Thanks.

Hi Shahrouz,
I can't reproduce your issue.
There are some steps as following below you can try:
Check the setting Find and Replace(Tools->Environment->Find and Replace(
Use “devenv.exe /resetsettings”
Use Visual Studio Setup Wizard (via Control Panel) to repair Visual Studio
You also can read the reference about Find in Files:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dechx2tz.aspx
Hope you can find what cause your issue.
Best regards,
Ego [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Can't find some files after changing drive name

I keep all my music files on an external drive, and my iTunes folder (and iTunes Music folder) on the internal drive. After changing the name of the external drive, a good number of files (not all, and probably not even most, but a lot) couldn't be found by iTunes.
I'm suspecting that this problem results from having my files stored externally and separate from the internal default iTunes Music folder, but I'm hoping someone can give me some more details about this and hopefully help find a solution. Thanks.

In the root of the filesystem there normally is a folder "lost+found", in which files with strange names are found. These are the files cvfsck has collected in the recovering of the filesystemnames. It is sometimes not possible to recover the original file name and location. So this is the only way for cvfsck to give them back.
If you think the content of these files is allright, you can rename and relocate them.
Regards
Donald

After cvfsck can't find some files? What chances of recover them?

Hi all,
so the problem is that in my xsan one of the volumes have restarted 2-3 times in a day. So i did cvfsck -wv. During the chek it reported File System Status as Clean and at the end that F+ile system have been modified+. After that i can not find some of the files. Is this normal behavior of cvfsck? Is there any chances to recover lost files?
Thanks in advance

In the root of the filesystem there normally is a folder "lost+found", in which files with strange names are found. These are the files cvfsck has collected in the recovering of the filesystemnames. It is sometimes not possible to recover the original file name and location. So this is the only way for cvfsck to give them back.
If you think the content of these files is allright, you can rename and relocate them.
Regards
Donald

Some files not found

i have recently commenced importing cds to itunes. as i have many cds a little way through the import process i decided to store the songs on an external HD rather then the internal hd. however some songs were stored on the internal HD i have now copied these to the external and removed from the internal. now when i attemptr to play some songs ( those that i initially imported ) i Tunes can not find the files and asks if i want to find them.
my question is can i now direct itunes to look for the files in the new library location. is it possible to do this for all those songs in 1 command or will i have to redirect itunes for every song?
any help would be appreciated.
cheers

It's probably easier to just drag them back into your itunes library, and delete the references to the ones from the C: drive.
Otherwise you will have to locate each song's new path.
As you've discovered, it's a bad idea to move file locations outside of itunes. It stores the absolute path to each file, so if it changes, it can't find it.

Some files not previewing in Bridge CS4, only showing icons

This is not new but I finally got to the point where I'm bothered enough to write. I'm browsing folders that have Illustrator, Photoshop, and .tif files, and some files preview, and some just show the icon of the file type. What needs to happen for me to be able to preview ALL the files in the folder I'm browsing? b.t.w., it's not just this folder - it's happened before with other folders and there seems to be no sense to it - some folders I browse everything shows up, others only some files preview and others are as described above. Thanks for any advice...

I would go to tools/cache/purge cache for xxx folder. Let the thumbs rebuild and see how it acts. It is best not to start a new action until the spinning wheel in lower right corner stops to indicate it is finished.

Some files not showing up in iPhoto

I used the Grand Perspective app on my iPhoto library package to find large video files I could reduce to save space. In the process, I've found some files that are in the package but aren't displayed in iPhoto. If I do a search for the file in iPhoto, nothing comes up. Any ideas what might be going on? I'm using version 9.5.1

Empty the internal Trash:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash

Where file is located in computer? search only finds a file not showing a location of the file, is it similar to windows 8 philosophy - simplify without any logic?

Lately can not find a file location directory, when searching for the file finder finds it right away but I can not see where the file is located in the computer directory. Lately I see simplification of Mac OSX which is not always a good thing where I have to find the answers on the internet when my intuitive way is out- like finding monitor resolution with a use of option key to display all the options. I looks like Windows 8 and Microsoft philosophy of simplification without any logic is adopted by Apple engineers.

Open Finder> go to View> choose "Show Path Bar."
Highlight any file and the complete path will show in the bottom finder window bar now.

Upgrade PSE 9 to LR 3.3 -- some files not supported

i just upgraded my PSE 9 catalog to LR 3.3. Upgrade seemed to go fine, but afterward LR said it "added 20,000 photos but 11 were in a format this is not supported." Any idea how to figure out what photos (or perhaps videos) those were?

sounds like a great idea, but i converted from PSE 9 and my understanding is that psedbtool doesn't work with it?
Oops, yes, that's correct. A couple of people have asked for the psedbtool source to see if they could make it work with PSE 9, but I haven't heard back their results.
A couple more suggestions:
- Use my Any File plugin to start importing all files from whatever root folder you keep your pics in -- browse to the root folder, click Choose Selected, and the list of all files under the chosen folder that aren't in the LR catalog will be displayed. You can copy and paste that list. (Don't click Import to complete the import.)
http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/anyfile.htm
- Add a dummy keyword to all the photos in your LR catalog, and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File. This will have the side effect of changing the date-modified of every file in your catalog. In a command prompt, type this command:
dir /b /od /s /tw root-pictures-folder > allfiles.txt
This will list in "allfiles.txt" all files within your root pictures folder, in ascending order of date-modified -- the files not in the LR catalog will be at the top.
- Use the LR/Transporter plugin to list all the files in your LR catalog. Use the "dir" command above in a command prompt (without the /od switch) to list all the files in your root pictures folder. Use Word, Excel, or a Unix/Linux "diff" command to find the files that are in one list but not the other.

Spotlight finds some files, not others

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