Spotlight search ignores spotlight comments

Using the Commenteer utility I've modified hundreds of spotlight comments for files. But spotlight search doesn't find them. Why? mdimport doesn't seem to be running. Why?

I figured out what is going on, but don't understand it. Commenteer lets me add spotlight comments in batch mode even when the files are locked. (All my photos are locked so I don't accidentally delete any.) The comments are really there--I checked. But if the files are locked when I change the comments, spotlight will not index the files. If I unlocked the files before using Commenteer to make a batch change to the comments, then spotlight will index the files. So my workaround for now is to unlock all the files before changing the comments. Spotlight doesn't "see" that a file has been updated, if it is locked. If I unlock it, change the comments, and then lock it again, Spotlight notices that and indexes the file. Kind of annoying.

Similar Messages

Q: Can Spotlight be configured to default to search for the comments field?

Can the Spotlight search box be configured to search only for Comments in Get Info as the default? I know that I can add a line to the search parameters that will search there. But, I'm most interested in searching for tags than for words throughout a document. When I would need to do that, I could always add a line to the search parameters.
Thanks.

See the responses in your other post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1359292&tstart=0

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

Raw Search Terms for "Spotlight Comment" and "Locked" Status

Is it possible to do a raw search for a specific Spotlight Comment. I know the option exists in the Other… dialog box, but I need to find files that do not contain comments which is not choice.
Also, is there any way to find only files that are unlocked?

If you go to Others and select Raw Query you can use it find items with a specific comment, and items without any comment. For example, if you have the comment "testme" in the Spotlight field you would paste this into the Raw Query field:
kMDItemFinderComment == "testme"
and all files with that comment would be found. To find files in a folder that contain NO comment at all, you would use this:
kMDItemFinderComment != "*"
Be warned though: when I tried this on a folder with only 5 items in it, 4 with comments and one without. it worked, returning the lone uncommented file, but it took an amazingly long time to do so (perhaps a minute, while the search for "testme" was instantaneous).
The "File readable" and "File writeable" functions shown in Others, which presumably are what one would use to find locked files, simply do not work. This is not surprising since the information about whether a file is locked or not does not in fact appear in a file's metadata. I guess that will be a future addition. You can use find in Terminal to search for files that are locked/unlocked. Let me know if you really want to do this.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Spotlight Comments do not appear in Spotlight search results

I have a .png file on my desktop.
Right click >> Get Info
Spotlight Comments has the string 'Fruit' saved.
If I search for 'Fruit' in Spotlight I get no results, why?

Hi TD
Yes and no.
Yes it worked the way you mentioned but if I change the Spotlight Comment: on the same file to something else I can still find it via 'Fruit'. I much prefer command-space bar to call Spotlight.
How long does it take a change to a Spotlight Comment: to filter into Spotlight?
Its not the end of the world its just I was finding Spotlight really useful until I came up against this.

Spotlight comments search and smart folder fails

Spotlight search of the "Spotlight Comments" field fails after a file is saved in TextEdit or iWork programs.
I reproduced this failure, 100% of the time, in OS X 10.8 and 10.8.1 (with iCloud enabled or with it iCloud disabled) and can not reproduce this failure in Mac OS X 10.7.x
The steps to reproduce are simple and quick:
Create a new test file in TextEdit and Save it on the Mac (saved as, for example, test.rtf)
Quit TextEdit
In the Get Info panel for the test.rtf file and enter some unique text in the Spotlight Comments: field, for example XYZZY:
In Finder create a new Smart Folder (File > New Smart Folder)
Create a search criteria in the Spotlight comment field for the unique text from step 3 (XYZZY in this example) and hit Save and name the Smart FolderNote, the test.rtf file immediately appears in the smart folder
Open the test.rtf with TextEdit and change the text and Save the file.
Note, as soon as you hit Save in TextEdit the test.rtf file disapears from the SmartFolder. This is the error. Also note, the Spotlight Comment value (in this example, the text XYZZY) is unchanged, it still exists.
See attached screen shot after step 7 that shows the smart folder no longer shows the text.rtf file even though the search criteria is met.
I have reproduced this error with TextEdit and Pages and Numbers but not with other applications that are not iCloud enabled.

Clendenen02 wrote:
where should I run the code? in the terminal, or an applescript, or should put it in xcode and run it from there or the terminal.
What MrHoffman said.
But if it's easier, you can wrap it in Automator and have Automator ask for the Folders: (Test on a sample of your files before running on all 700 files)
(do you really own 700 movies??)
The Workflow is:
Put this in the Run Shell Script Action (and pass input as arguments":
PicDir=$1
MovDir=$2
for f in $PicDir/*
do
     if [ ! -d "$f" -a "${f##*.}" = "jpeg" ]; then
          comment=$(mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment "$f")
          if [[ $comment != "(null)" ]]; then
               picname=${f##*/}
               movname=${picname%.*}.m4v
               if [[ -e "$MovDir"/$movname ]]; then
osascript <<-EOF
tell application "Finder"
set comment of file (POSIX file "$MovDir/$movname") to "$comment"
end tell
EOF
               fi
          fi
     fi
done
(BTW, I know that this is a bit of sloppy scripting (wraping an osascript in a Bash Script wrapped in Automator, but it does what you need)

Spotlight comments search

I have a customer that upgraded to 10.5 server for the spotlight comments searching on share points. They can search everything else but the comments. We have tried setting up a group with all the users having full read/write permissions. I have reindexed the share points. I can search the comments from the xserve that the raid is attached to. Just not on any of the networked computers. The networked computers are all PowerMac G5s running Tiger. I have heard that having a space in the share point can cause problems and some of the share points have space but not all and they can't search the comments on any of the share points. We have tried searching files on the root directory as well as in folders on the share points. Has anyone else had this problem or have a suggestion?
Thanks

Hi TD
Yes and no.
Yes it worked the way you mentioned but if I change the Spotlight Comment: on the same file to something else I can still find it via 'Fruit'. I much prefer command-space bar to call Spotlight.
How long does it take a change to a Spotlight Comment: to filter into Spotlight?
Its not the end of the world its just I was finding Spotlight really useful until I came up against this.

Search by Finder "Color Label" or "Spotlight Comments"?

Is it possible to do a search of referenced images by either their Finder Color Label, or their Spotlight Comments in Aperture?
I suspect not, but thought I'd ask just in case I'm missing something..
Would anyone else find this capability useful?
G5 2x2.5Ghz/2.5GB; 15" 1.25Mhz PowerBook/1GB; 4x3.0Ghz Mac Pro/4GB Mac OS X (10.4.1)

heh.. so I'm guessing that's a "No", "no", and "NO".
Oh well.. guess I'll submit some feedback then.

How to copy a files name and spotlight comments to a text file for an entire folder

I have movie covers saved as a jpeg for every movie my family and I own. There is about 700 and they each have a comment of the main actors, release dates, and descriptions. This makes it easy to find what to watch. I want my parents to have all of this info but they have a windows laptop so the comments don't transfer with the file and can't be searched like you can on a mac. Is there an applescript, automator, program I can download, or program code supported in xcode that will do at least one of the following things?
1)Take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it into a text document like word that looks like this...
File Name1- Spotlight Comment for file 1
File Name 2- Spotlight Comment for file 2
. for all 700 files in a folder
2) It would be equally helpful if there was something that would take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it to a movie file's comments with the same name but obviously has different extention. For an example
In a Pictures folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.jpeg       Comment: (2008) Genre: Action...             <- copy comment
In a Movie Folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.m4v       Comment:                                               <- paste
and do this for all 700 files
3) Is there a free photo program that works on mac and windows that I can put all my movie pictures in and have a description like I did with the comments? It would also need a place that to search the description for keywords. So Basically an itunes for pictures that works on both mac and windows. If so I still need a way to get the spotlight comments to the description.
4) I feel like this would make things more difficult, but if not I can put all of the .m4v files in itunes so instead of pasting all the comments back into a file in finder paste them in a description in itunes
5) At the very least a code that I can run one by one for every file that will paste the comments into the same document
Note: When I say spotlight comments I mean the comment box that is available when you click on get info of a file. The pictures are in the pictures section of finder in a folder called Movie Pictures. The movie files are on an external hard-drive in a file called Movies. Also I am slightly familiar with applescript and automater in that I have used both to create keyboard shortcuts and simple voice commands. I have programmed in c++ and C too. So If you give me a code for applescript I do know what to do with it.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read all of this and extra thanks to anyone who tries to help.

Clendenen02 wrote:
2) It would be equally helpful if there was something that would take the name of the picture file and spotlight comment, copy and paste it to a movie file's comments with the same name but obviously has different extention. For an example
In a Pictures folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.jpeg       Comment: (2008) Genre: Action...             <- copy comment
In a Movie Folder
Name: Dark Knight, The.m4v       Comment:                                               <- paste
and do this for all 700 files
This Bash script will do it.
Edit "PicDir" and "MovDir" to the location of your Folders
(Note: The comment is written to the m4v file using xattr, so the Spotlight comment field appears blank in Finder, but the comment metadata is still indexed by Spotlight (If you add a Spotlight comment from Finder, it is stored both as an extended attribute and in a .DS_Store file)
#!/bin/bash
PicDir=$HOME/Desktop/Pictures
MovDir=$HOME/Desktop/Movies
for f in $PicDir/*
do
     if [ ! -d "$f" -a "${f##*.}" == "jpeg" ]; then
          comment=$(mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment "$f")
          if [[ $comment != "(null)" ]]; then
               picname=${f##*/}
               movname=${picname%.*}.m4v
               if [ -e "$MovDir"/$movname ]; then
                     xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment "\"$comment\"" "$MovDir"/$movname
               fi
          fi
     fi
done

How do I make disappeared Spotlight Comments Reappear

My spotlight comments in an entire folder have disappeared. However, the files do show up if I search in spotlight for a word which was in the comments. How do I make the comments reappear?

Draw the sahpe as a shape, not as pixels by using the proper button on the horizontal tool settings bar for the shape tools.
Mylenium

Smart Folders, Spotlight comments and Apple mail messages

Hi,
I have a simple question, but couldn't figure it out yet:
I have a workflow that tags specific mail messages according to the specific mail inbox folders I assign them to (be it via incoming rules, or Act-On rules) by automatically adding specific Spotlight comments.
My mail messages, therefore, have text in their comment boxes (if you check via GetInfo).
When I use Spotlight, I can find mail messages by searching for the comments - this is exactly as expected.
I however also have smart folders (searching for a specific Spotlight comment) that list other files that I tag with the same Spotlight comments - but my Smart Folders never find the mail messages with the requested tags (at most they find the folder that contains the messages if this folder is tagged - which it is generally not).
Question: how can I make sure that the Smart Folder does indeed identify and list the mail messages that I have tagged via Spotlight comment ?
Thanks a lot !
D.V.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Howdy,
I cannot reproduce this problem myself...I see the same results in both the Mail spotlight and the spotlight menu bar item. I'm not sure if after installing 10.5 a new spotlight index is created, but it might be worth a shot to create a fresh index and see if that helps.
I haven't tried this, but it was the easy way I could find to reindex.
Open Spotlight Preferences
In the privacy tab, add the volume you want to reindex
After a few moments, remove that volume from the privacy list
Allow Spotlight to reindex the volume
Please let me know if that works for reindexing.
+R

Cross-Platform Spotlight Comments?

Hi there, we have a massive database with oodles of images on it. Some images have the product name in the title, others do not. We'd like a quick and easy way to do a search for say...Potatoes, and have all of the images associated with potatoes show up. I know you can add Spotlight Comments to each individual photo, but I'm having trouble getting any results from my search.
Also, will a PC running Windows be able to do any kind of a search of these items? Or is there a way to label the images with keywords so both a PC and a MAC can do searches for them? We're trying to avoid making duplicate images that are then moved into an actual photo called Potatoes which will no only bog down our server with more images, but could cause confusion if any images are changed and not move into the exact same folders again.
Thanks for any input.

Start with a search for *search server, search share, shared search*, or variants. There are many recent posts on the subject about hosed searches w/10.5.6. Whether or not there are solutions for your issue, I haven't a clue since everything I have is Apple—I don't do windoze.

Collections in finder, quick add to spotlight comments

I'm wanting to optimize the way I'm using spotlight, and know that there's a field for spotlight comments when you select and item in finder and command-i... I'm wondering if there's a keyboard shortcut that can let me add spotlight comments directly, or is there a Quicksilver plug-in that might let me do that?
Also, within spotlight is there a way to configure it so that the first (or only) items to come up are the ones that I've added the relevant spotlight comments to?
Basically what I'm wanting to do is to add the metadata that would effectively make collections like in Yojimbo or Notemind... I love Yojimbo's idea, but I don't want a separate database for all my yojimbo collections... I don't want to be bound to Yojimbo and don't want it always running in the background... the finder is already a fabulous database, and between QS and spotlight you can do a million more things than Yojimbo can let me do... so I would love to get this "collections" effect inside finder without making a million aliases for my files...
Any suggestions?

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

How can I disable spellcheck in "Spotlight Comments" window?

How can I disable the daft spellchecking in the “Spotlight Comments” section of OS 10.8.3’s “Get Info” windows? I don’t have that problem in my older Mac, which has OS 10.5.8.

I don't really see it as a march backwards, but then I'm not a great speller or typist so I'm happy to have it check my comments.
Is there some specific reason you call the service "daft"? I assume you know you can always add words to the spelling dictionary. I have done that for a few made up "words" I use as tags. That way, I know if I have accidentally misspelled them & there is no mystery about why a Spotlight search doesn't include them.
Would that work for you?

Spotlight returns MORE than just filename or Spotlight Comments?

I am getting search returns on jpegs, with words than seemingly have nothing
to do with the filename or "Spotlight Comments." Is there other metadata I can't see?
How do I access it?
Thanks!

Seen this:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MetadataAt tributesRef/MetadataAttrRef.html

Spotlight search ignores spotlight comments

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for