Why is spotlight **** ?

Can someone explain me why spotlight (among almost everything) is always indexing but not able to find anything ?
Like avery Apple thing "you can't say that it doesn't work" you can only say that under most conditions it only works once in a while. When i lookup on spotlight for an app, like twitter, it wont find it, but will propose me to open Activity Monitor (i'd like to have an apple developper lazyness monitor). When i want to look for all my factures, stored as pdf files in all my clients files and all starting by "FA", i type "FA" in spotight, open results in finder, as I can't eliminate what's not pdf, i order by name, but then I realize Mac Os X has never been to school, and therefore doesn't know alphabetical order, nor, by the way, how to conjugate French.
So obviously, I know, the only decent answer is : "burnt the **** down" or better "throw it on a genius face", maybe "ask samsung, they know better on everything Apple pretends to know about".
But, like right now, and i really feel like in the 90's when my father was teaching me how to use DOS, is there a way to use spotlight or do I have to go comand line ?
Please, if you earn money from Apple, don't answer that, you don't have credibility.

If you are interested in an answer, I would advise you to leave out all the profanity and ranting. That will only cause most people to either ignore you or ridicule you.
As to your problem, although I can't follow all aspects of your description, I do note that you say Spotlight is always indexing. If that is the case, that's surely related to your problems. Most likely, your Spotlight index is corrupt. You can force the computer to rebuild it from scratch following these instructions:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409

Similar Messages

  • Why is Spotlight not finding files in Applications Support

    Why is Spotlight not finding files in Users/UserName/Library/Applications Support ?
    What needs to be configured to do that?
    Thanks.

    CMD+F, click on Kind, select Other, and enable additional criteria. See http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html and http://homepage.mac.com/francines/articles/Leopard/leospot.html for starters.

  • Why my spotlight can not find my personal files ? It can find them before but can not find them now,I want to know why?

    why my spotlight can not find my personal files ? It can find them before but can not find them now,I want to know why?

    From the menu bar, select
     ▹ System Preferences ▹ Spotlight ▹ Privacy
    The list of items excluded from Spotlight indexing is shown (it may be empty.) Click the plus (“+”) icon to add an item to the list. Select your boot volume (under DEVICES) and add it to the list. Then remove it from the list by selecting it and clicking the minus (“-“) icon.
    Spotlight will rebuild the index. If you try to do a Spotlight search now from the magnifying-glass icon in the top right corner of the display, a pulsing dot will appear in the icon. When the dot disappears, the indexing is complete.

  • Why is Spotlight not finding images based on filename?

    I have 25,000 photos that I have meticulously named, but when I try to do a Spotlight search based on filename, nothing shows up.  For example, if I type "Disney," then about 200 photos with "Disney" in the file name should appear, but they don't. I can find the images on my own, for example "091012 CA Disney Family Vacation2," but Spotlight can not. Why?

    Hi there tau_ataina,
    Based you the issue you are describing, you may need to re-index Spotlight. Take a look at the article below for more information. 
    Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
    -Griff W. 

  • How do I determine why my spotlight folder is so huge?

    I have about 700 GB of files on a 3 TB hard drive.  The .Spotlight-V100 folder is 450 GB in size.  I have re-indexed the drive.  How do I figure out why the index is so huge?

    Never mind. It's the DC-In board because it boots on the battery. No charge light when plugged in. One of the hardest installs but, what the heck. I love a good challenge.
    Thanks

  • Why is Spotlight so much better than Finder?

    I don't get why Finder is so useless.  I type a file name or application name into Finder, it doesn't find it.  I type it into Spotlight, and POOF there it is, right at the top!  Is there an explanation for this?

    Finder just uses Spotlight, so searches should be identical given identical conditions. When you search from Finder, confirm that you're having the search look at the entire system ("This Mac") or it may be searching only a specific drive or folder and hence turning up only partial results.  You can set what Finder looks at by default in the Finder Advanced preferences; I set mine to "Search This Mac" so that the search is widest by default.
    Note that unlike the Menu Bar Spotlight search, Finder does not return a "Top Hit" - returns are strictly alphabetical by file/folder name -  so things may not be at the top like you may expect.
    Hope this help.

  • Why is spotlight not finding files in a folder (I know the files are there)

    I've been having trouble with spotlight. I've done all the possible means of resetting spotlight folders via pref pane and via command line. Either way I go about it spotlight is not working properly.
    My test for this is to search in folder for a file I know is in there. But, spotlight in finder isn't finding the file. Why? What prevents SPotlight in FInder from seeing files that are there? None of my drives are in the privacy section of the spotlight preferences.
    Leopard 10.5.6 Mac Pro

    this is certainly not normal. it looks like spotlight indexing is choking on something. if this continues you should probably stop it. look in the console log. there may be a record of what it's choking on. you can try deleting the hidden spotlight folder at the top of the drive. this will restart indexing and delete all the current spotlight data. if it keeps doing this I don't really know what to suggest. you can try excluding various folders on the drive from spotlight to see if you can isolate where the problem is.

  • Why does Spotlight find things immediately but Finder takes forever?

    Can someone explain why you type in something in Spotlight and poof it's there immediately but the Finder takes forever and a day?

    By "Finder", you mean Command-F in the Finder? That is just a different interface for Spotlight -- it uses the same index. There is no reason why it would ever be less up-to-date then a Spotlight menu search. As for speed of the search, I cannot reproduce your experience. A Command-F Finder search usually finds what I am looking for before I can finish typing the keyword. I am on Leopard now, where Spotlight is stunningly fast. But I fired up my Blue&White G3 a little while ago and confirmed that, even there, a Finder search is much faster than my clumsy typing.

  • Why is Spotlight not showing me results from the entire disk?

    Spotligt in Tiger showed every single file that contained the name searched for. In Leopard I cannot comprehend what and where it searches.
    I had to find certain Compressor files because the app crashed all the time. It was almost impossible to find them because Spotlight didn't just show them to me, and I had to search for them manually with the paths given to me in at troubleshooting document from Apple.
    Is it a bug or has Spotlight in Leopard changed the way it searches, and I just don't get it?

    I had the same problem on my iMac.
    What I did was download MacPilot, use the option to reset Spotlight.
    At first it seemed not to work, but MacOS is a bit slow picking up the change.
    Then de machine was indexing for about 3 hours (it indexed for 10mins or so after my upgrade!) and now it seems fine.
    I tried the: add HD to PRivacy tab of Spotlight, then remove it again to reset Spotlight, but that didn

  • 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)

  • Why does spotlight not show up in time machine

    So I recently upgraded to os x lion and i have time machine backing up everything for me. my main problem is while in time machine, all i get is a basic window with all my folders. there is no spotlight so it is hard to search for lost things quickly also there is no back button in there either so if i look in the wrong folder i have to exit

    http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/15A.html
    http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/15.html
    Stefan

  • Why will spotlight only search my HD and not shared volumes?

    spotlight gives me the choice to search shared volumes but will not produce any find results.
    This is really causing us production issues.
    Thanks for any help

    You can keep Spotlight from indexing a volume altogether by placing the Volume in the Privacy section of the Spotlight system preference. You would do this for instance, for your Backup volume, because otherwise Spotlight would find duplicates of all your data. Is it possible this is the case?
    I have seen where the solution is to add the volume to privacy, to not index and then remove. This seems to make spotlight index the volume. If that does not work, here is an article that details how to manually have spotlight manually index an external drive:
    http://forum.multiplexapp.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=17
    Notice the caveat in the article
    There are some potential drawbacks to indexing network drives, especially those with large amounts of storage. First, if your drive holds tens or hundreds of thousands of files, indexing can be slow and tedious to the OS, and may affect your operating system's performance.
    Might be wise to index during off hours.
    Cheers
    Michael

  • Why are Spotlight and Dictionary quitting immediately after being opened and queried?

    Every since running an application named Mac Tuneup I have had problems with Spotlight and Dictionary.  For example, I open Spotlight, type in a query, the program runs, then quits unexpectedly.  The same is happening with Dictionary.  My suspicion is that Mac Tuneup removed something it shouldn't have, but I'm not sure what.  Any thoughts as to the best way of resolving this?

    I believe the issue is resolved.  I had already installed the 10.6.8 combo update and did a reinstall from the Snow Leopard disc, but I think a cold start shook everything into place.  As to Mac Tuneup, I realized I'd made a big mistake in buying it as soon as it started running.  It's long gone.  Thanks again.

  • Why does Spotlight no longer have a View All feature?

    I typed in the exact address of an Excel spreadsheet and it did not show up anywhere in the new Spotlight search. I used to be able to View All in order to find a document or file, but that feature appears to be gone.  Did I miss something?

    Show All in Finder… at the bottom of the list.

  • Why is spotlight indexing not starting?

    In spotlight, it states that it is estimating index time. This message never disappears. In a similar thread, somebody was advised to post the following code into terminal;
    syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v boxd | tail | open -f -a TextEdit
    The resulting text allowed the answerer to determine that there was a corrupt font file. I also put the code into terminal and this was the resulting text;
    Jun 16 14:20:58 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mds[41] <Error>: (Error) Backup: MDSBackupTask:0x0 Undispatched backup task:471111 resolved:0 cid:616950205797322:-1 finished:-1
    Jun 18 15:39:16 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mds[41] <Error>: (Error) Backup: MDSBackupTask:0x0 Undispatched backup task:17031201 resolved:0 cid:697273338727840:-1 finished:-1
    Jun 18 15:39:32 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mds[41] <Error>: (Error) Backup: MDSBackupTask:0x0 Undispatched backup task:16965667 resolved:0 cid:817539723702420:-1 finished:-1
    Jun 18 15:46:51 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mdworker[12505] <Warning>: CFPreferences: user home directory for user kCFPreferencesCurrentUser at /Users/Guest is unavailable. User domains will be volatile.
    Jun 20 10:22:06 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mds[41] <Error>: (Error) Backup: MDSBackupTask:0x0 Undispatched backup task:16957469 resolved:0 cid:817553925166352:-1 finished:-1
    Jun 20 10:50:39 Jack-Elliotts-MacBook-Pro-2.local mds[41] <Error>: (Error) Server: ==== XPC handleXPCMessage XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INVALID
    Can anybody help me find out what this means?
    Message was edited by: jackelliott

    Please read this whole message before doing anything.
    This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
    The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, or by a peripheral device. 
    Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
    Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including Wi-Fi on certain iMacs. The next normal boot may also be somewhat slow.
    The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin. Test while in safe mode. Same problem? After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Maybe you are looking for