Spotlight searches are totally worthless (incomplete)

spotlight seems to be totally randomly selecting files to match, regardless of the search.
as a simple test, i can search for my name, or the word "the", or the word "email", or other things which should produce thousands of hits. In almost all cases, I get back a list of about 12 files, include one or two (out of the tens of thousands) of my photos, MP3 files, etc, with absoultely no method to the results.

Gunnar, Thanks for the suggestion. I did this, and Spotlight went and rebuilt my index (spent quite a bit of time doing this), but still I receive garbage results. Any other ideas?

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Why are my Spotlight searches getting slower and slower?

My Spotlight searches were becoming slower and slower. I solved the problem by downloading OnyX , running the disc optimization application under the "automation" section and resetting the Spotlight index. When I rebooted my G4, Spotlight re-indexed my computer contents. My Spotlight searches are now very quick again.

You have probably answered your own problem in a way....
As you save more and more files to your computer Spotlight has more and more information and files to run through, when these are indexed Spotlight then has a sort of record for what you are searching for so when you indexed spotlight it then didn't have to do so much work.

Spotlight search top hits problems in iphone 5 ios 6

I upgraded from Iphone 4s ios 5.1.1 to Iphone 5 ios 6.02 yesterday. (Att to verizon, but not relevant to this post)
On first glance at spotlight search on new iphone 5, I thought for sure the index for my spotlight search was totally corrupt. If I start typing 'Hol' for holly, after h or o she should come up as a top hit...instead my top hit is Chris Luxxxx (nothing to do with H or O)...I keep typing...top hit area totally disappears and Holly xxxx shows in middle of very long list of what would appear to be totally unrelated contacts. I have to get to Holly Bo before the list is down to 4 names...and 3 of those aren't related to her (on the surface....)....and top hits still doesn't pop up?? I still had my 4s next to me...and the results were night and day different...and the iphone 5 were so totally irrelevant compared to the 4s for what I was trying to do (just look up a contact...the thing i use spotlight search for most!?!?)
NOTE:
1) At this point, I had already disabled all categories but 'contacts for my spotlight search to minimize the hundreds matches I was getting in all kinds of categories that looked irrelevant......and to focus on what was going on with my contacts.
2) My contacts are synched with MS Exchange config connected to google apps account
3) I have about 1500 contacts and 1700 other contacts (email addresses only), and TONS of notes in contact 'comments' fields (foreshadowing here....'comments' fields....)
After about 60 minutes of thinking the index for my records was corrupt...and reboots and resets and internet searches..I tried thinking differently....and I started looking at the 'comments' fields in my contacts...and whoooaaaa....arghhhhh...
It appears spotlight is now indexing 'comments' section of contacts now as well many other fields in the contact records that I don't believe were previously indexed.........and apple is NOT not prioritizing the results by any fields (like giving first name, last name, business name top hit result priority)....and I know for a fact it did not use index notes..because i needed that function so I downloaded an app to do that....I found the fact that it did not index 'comments' section annoying, but tolerable...now they they are indexing it, but with poor implementation and no prioritization, spotlight has become a great tool for locating **** near anything on my phone...but a really crappy short cut to get to the contacts I wanted to get to....a better implementation of prioritization of 'top hits' would go a long ways...
Back to my searches again....when I searched 'Ho'.........Chris Luxxxis showed up first as a 'top hit'....made no sense at all....but this is what I pieced together.....e he was the most recent phone call I made, and 'ho' is in the 'comments' section of his contact info 6 times........in the words home, home inspector, house masters, house password.....arghhhhh.....I did a lot more searches...and made some phone calls, and when I ran same search again....Chris Luxxxx was not longer an immediate top hit!?!? ****...I don't need a short cut to recent calls in my top hits spotlight search!?!? It's not the magic genie!!!! And when applied like that..it just makes a huge bowl of spaghetti!!
I thought...okay...well, overall it's a better tool for finding EVERYTHING on my phone, just crappier for shortcutting to contacts to make calls and send emails....(i never used the contacts section of my phone on 4s for 3 years...just used spotlight, and it was awesome, easy and fast and got me to my contacts better than any other search system on any device i'd ever had).......So I thought.....ok so maybe I'll just have to used my contacts area more now to get to my contacts........and guess what...it appears the same darn alogrythim for search results there!!!
Apple has obliterated the concept of top hits in spotlight search..and made finding the common items in the phone like contacts a heck of a lot more typing....I only have 1 Holly in my contacts....and I have to type 'Holly Bow' before she is the sole contact shown...and I have to get to 'Holly B' before the list is down to 15 results....oh....but if I recall this issue and start with her last name...only need to get three letters in to find her...unfortunately, but its individuall relevent...ie another contacts last name is a bomb for searching, but first is quick....
Apple use to think for their users...they assumed what was most important given a spot in an application...and overall, made some decent decisions for the non technically oriented....(personally, I didn't like it...been a pc guy for 20 years..and a programmer...drove me nuts, but had a place for their customer base and nice if what you did with your computer was inline with the applications apple designed their machines to be great at....)...and I loved my iphone 4s compared to too many config options and poor implementation on windows phones ...and i'm still an iphone fan...for it's simplicity and lack of total cusomization actually (i get my creative juices flowing doing things other than customizing smart phones)........but in this case, too much info can be as bad or worse than not enough if you don't include some controls to start limiting relevance somehow....
I'm 90 minutes into this...guess now that I seem to have concluded what's up...I can start working with it or around it...but it's a big departure for where spotlight was...and while it offers more...for me, it's offering a lot less for my hourly and daily needs.
If my assumptions about these changes are wrong or anyones figured out how to get top hits useful again, please advise.
thx

Try at total shut down of Safari, double click on the home button then find the Safari app, hold you finger on the app for a few secs then tap the red minus sign to close the app. Re-launch Safari then give it a try.

TIF metadata not found in Spotlight searched (JPEG okay)

Hi,
We've been trying to use Spotlight to help manage our collection of digital photos. All of our photos are imported from raw format and edited in photoshop, during the process adding a description, keywords, etc. (in an XMP extension), and then save as TIFFs. We had hoped to use Spotlight to be able to search through this metadata, but it doesn't seem to be able to read our entries. 'mdls' reveals an incomplete set of metadata. If the images are saves as JPEGs, however, it works - description and keywords are searchable using Spotlight and 'mdls' gives a complete set of metadata. In addition, if we then use Photoshop to convert the TIFFs to JPEGs, there is no problem, so the data clearly aren't missing.
Does anyone know what is wrong? Is the implementation of Spotlight searching of TIFF metadata incomplete? Is there something about these parts of TIFF metadata that is incompatible with Spotlight? Is there any way around this? As far as we can tell, the TIFF problem has been around for all versions of Tiger (10.4 - 10.4.6).
Regards,
-Karl & Linda
MacMini 1.42 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)
MacMini 1.42 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)
MacMini 1.42 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Karl & Linda,
Welcome to Apple Discussions. It is possible that the problem you are experiencing will generate many replies that will take you far away from what you are actually trying to do. Spotlight is notoriously unreliable and uncooperative, and presents many problems.
In the interim (while we all wait in hope that Apple will smell the coffee), the usual thing seems to be to download a piece of freeware called EasyFind, which you can get at VersionTracker.com.
EasyFind finds files. Which is more than can be said for Spotlight. If you are dissatisfied with Spotlight you are advised to email Apple directly, from this Support site, describing the issue.
I hope EasyFid works for you.

Spotlight Searches POP Mail Attachments

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Thanks

Hello I have the same problem and I don't think this behavior happened in Lion or Snow Leopard (at least for me). Although the Spotlight "Search Results" pane in my preferences excludes "Messages and Chats", every spotlight search from the finder windows also includes result from every attachment in every mail message. As a result, spotlight searches are barely useable. I found no solution. However, it looks like it was an old bug (since 2007 at least: see https://discussions.apple.com/message/5916605#5916605). Bug or bad decision -- the limit is hard to set between the two -- that reappeared in Mountain Lion.
l.

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Hello.. I'm seeing all my emails from all my accounts located in the "spotlight search" feature of my iPad and iPhone4. What's most troubling is, there are emails that have previously been deleted. I have confirmed over and over that all trash folders for accounts are emptied as well as all other folders.. I empty the trash very regularly. When I select an email from the list in the spotlight screen, it will take me to an in box for that email where it may or may not exist.. Often it opens another persons email all together.. The bottom line is that I can not delete these emails and it's very nerve racking... Any help is greatly appreciated. Than you..

Thank Goodness for Time Machine. I was able to restore from a recent back up.
However as a follow up I now have a glitch in that Icloud email will only restore from oldest to newest. My Icloud.com account is fine. All my email are in chronological order from newest to oldest.
With the help of support from this site I was able to confirm that the problem is not resolved by disabling mail and then enabling again or even from deleting the Icloud Email Account and then reloading. It is exactly the same.
The only way I can get yesterday's email on my devices is to load 5000 emails starting back in 2010.
I think I caused a glitch when I was restoring from Time Machine. It was late at night and it was taking a long time so I went to bed thinking it would just continue on. Well i should have taken my computer out of Sleep Mode because my Imac must have powered down somehow causing the glitch.
Although you would think that I would also have a corrupted email account on Icloud.com
who knows....... the reason why i tend to live with problems rather than correct them because i hate it when stuff like this happens when you do................

Are messages sorted by date when you use spotlight search on iphone / ipad?

When you use spotlight search on an ipad or iphone, and you are searching specifically for text messages, how are the results sorted?
it doesnt look like they sort by date modified, or do they?

i mean Imessages not SMS messages

Spotlight searches on network share points are slow

I have a 2008 Xserve running SL 10.6.8
I can perform local spotlight searches directly on the server with no issue. When users connect to a share point on the Xserve and attempt to search it using Spotlight, Finder freezes and pinwheels for a while and finally recovers and continues on with the searches.
The freezing can last as short as 5-10 seconds and can be as long as a few minutes. The users are getting irritated as this is a common occurence.
If I restart the Xserve, the issue will go away for about a week. It's almost like clockwork...a week goes by, and the Xserve needs to be reset.
The hard drives in the Xserve are over 3 years old, and I'm not sure if it could be a hardware issue or something else entirely. Does anyone have any suggestions on what tools I could use to determine the health of my Xserve's hardware or any other ideas as to what may be causing this issue?
Thanks

Ran a Drive Genius scan and integrity check on the RAID volume on the Xserve with no errors reported... so either Drive Genius isn't finding anything wrong or the drives are genuinely in good shape.
I'm planning on setting up some Automator scripts to restart the server during downtime on the weekends but I feel this is a less than desireable solution.

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Hi -
My company is slow to change. We are just now getting some Leopard workstations in our enterprise. The thing my users noticed right away was that under 10.5.5, they are unable to get any results from Spotlight searches on our Tiger Xserves over AFP. The Tiger workstation users can get search results from share points but not Leopard ones.
The Xserves all have 10.4.9 Server installed. The XServes and workstations are all bound to AD with SSO turned on. I limited the servers 10.4.9 Server because with 10.4.11 Server I get AD issues. 10.4.9 is stable for us.
I am forced to use Leopard as the new MacPros demand it
My question - What should I do so the Leopard workstations (10.5.5) can get real Spotlight results from my share points?
I have looked at the other Apple Support Boards and I don't get understand what they are talking about.
Thanks in advance.

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When I'm using it as an app launcher, the pop-up window in the middle of the screen is not an issue. I type a few keys and it's gone. For example, "CMD-Spacebar S A Return" launches safari.
When I'm using it as a calculator the pop-up window is often annoying because it obscures the data I want to do calculations on. I have to remember all the numbers I want to type in. Could I just use the calculator app? Of course, but this wasn't an issue previously.
When I'm using it as a search tool the pop-up window is usually not a problem but sometimes obscures information I want to see
Bottom line based on my use cases is that I prefer the pop-up out of the way in the corner.

How can I delete emails that only appear when I do a spotlight search?

I have a number of emails that are only locatable through a spotlight search which I am unable to delete. They all appear to be unread, although they were read. The only options I have when I bring them up are to "Cancel" or "Send". Choosing "Cancel" brings me to whichever email account I was most recently using. Hitting "Send" does, indeed, send them, but makes them no easier to delete.

The only way to delete them from the Spotlight cache is to totally restore your iPad as new.
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Help! On the new iOS 7 I can't find spotlight search!

Then you are swiping too close to the top of the screen.
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Since you didn't include any pertinent info such as the Mac model and OS version you are running, here is some general information:
Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
Depending on which OS yours came with originally - and which OS you are now running - you would either need your original install disks - you can call Apple for replacements by giving them your serial number. Or you may be able to reinstall the OS by using recovery (again, depends on which model/which OS).

Why is my spotlight search slow/unresponsive in IOS 7... specifically when I start the search with the letters "n" or "c".

I have an iPhone 5 that must be just over a year old now. I don't remember exactly when this problem started, but I think it was right after updating to IOS 7. The problem is that with certain searches, such as "chrome" or "calender", the spotlight search will basically do nothing. It is somewhat random. Sometimes it will work imidiatly as I am typing it like it usually did. But other times, I will write out the whole word, press search, and still nothing will come up.
As I was just testing it now, I came up with an interesting discovery. I tested every letter of the alphabet and while 24 of them immidiatly worked fine like usual, it was actually only searches that started with "n" or "c" that did not work. Perhaps the reason I noticed this so much is because some of the apps I use all the time are Chrome, Calender, Notes, Contacts, Calculator, Clock, Camera (wow- just realized how many apps started with "c"!).
While in spotlight, if I type in C or N and then delete it and try to type another letter that would work normally, it does not work. So if I type in N and then delete it and type in A, A will not come up with results like it would if I just started with A. But if I close and reopend spotlight search and then type in A, it works fine.
When spotlight search is unresponsive if I wait for about a min sometimes results will actually come up, other times it will sort of crash (it will just randomly close before any results came up).
I could go on and on with the little details concerning this problem but I do not know what info would/would not be useful to you guys. I have tried restoring my phone from a backup and nothing changed. I am updated to the most recent version. My phone has never been jailbroken and otherwise is in perfect shape.
Thanks for reading,
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I've seen this happen before, and generally turning off Documents and Data in Settings > iCloud will fix it.
If that doesn't work, try the following.
1. Restart the phone and check it out.
2. Reset the phone (hold the home button and the lock button until you see an Apple Logo and then let them go).
3. Go into Settings > General > Reset > Reset all Settings and test it out again
4. If none of the above work, try creating either an iTunes backup or an iCloud backup and restore the device as new using iTunes. Here's an article to help with that: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4137

Spotlight searches are totally worthless (incomplete)

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