With Spotlight

Does Spotlight work on Time Capsule? If yes, how? I'm using Time Capsule as a normal HD, not with Time Machine?

And why it's hard to TC shows the size of the folders/files?

Similar Messages

  • Problems with Spotlight searching of shared volumes

    According to: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#spotlight, I should be able to "...search any connected Mac with Personal File Sharing enabled or a file server that’s sharing its files."
    It doesn't specify what "file server", so I presume it means Spotlight should be able to search any mounted shared volume (assuming, of course, that indexing has been enabled).
    I have a NAS device that I want to be able to search with Spotlight. According to mdutil, the volume is enabled for indexing, but I don't see any results when I search under "Shared" in Finder via Cmd+F. (I checked, and there's no .Spotlight folders on the volume.)
    From what I recall, under Tiger you could manually specify a network volume to index, but if you dismounted the volume, you'd have to re-enable indexing on next mount. This worked for other file systems (such as Fat32 & NTFS), as well as for HFS+ drives.
    According to mdutil in Leopard, the volume is still enabled for indexing even across dismounts. The NAS drive is not HFS+ formatted, but uses XFS.
    I've tried deleting the index, to no avail.
    Has anyone successfully used Spotlight to search mounted volumes on volumes not shared via another Mac?
    Am I missing something?

    You have not missed anything.... Leopard promises but does NOT deliver.
    I use an AFP server with Bonjour enabled. And NO NO NO Spotlight search is possible on this network volume...
    This is outrageous and FALSE information....
    Oh and - that Leopard is Sporting 300 new features is false info too.... Not even the "What is New in Leopard" says anything about 300 features.. But it sounds great doesn't it....

  • What's with Spotlight?

    I've never cared much for Spotlight, which is way overkill for my needs some 95% of the time. In 10.4 it was dog slow also, so I used EasyFind. In 10.5 it's faster, so I've been using Spotlight, though it's annoying that I have to manually switch to 'Search: File Name" every time I open it.
    Lately, however, I've been getting the feeling it isn't giving me complete results, that I know there are items on my computer that fit the search term(s) but that aren't appearing in the list. I just tried a search for "Ron Cobb", a favorite 60s cartoonist some of whose work I know I downloaded a while back. Spotlight showed nothing. So I went looking myself, and indeed there was a folder named "Ron Cobb" with a bunch of files in it, including a couple whose names also contain "Ron Cobb".
    I have my MBP's internal HD divided into three partitions: one (16GB) for the OS and applications, one (8GB) for my data (documents I've created), one (160+GB) for everything else. The items I was looking for are on the third volume. I tried Spotlight searches for some other items on this volume; some (actually only one) showed in the results, most (a dozen or so) did not.
    I use Spotless to turn Spotlight indexing off for several external disks I use for backup and other purposes. According to Spotless, indexing is on for this third volume on my internal HD, and indeed its Spotlight index takes up some 215MB. But Spotlight doesn't give me any (or hardly any) results for this volume.
    What's the point of a universal search utility that can't be relied on to find what you know is there?

    It's possible somehow the indexes on that volume have been corrupted.
    I'd suggest going to the Spotlight config preference, adding that volume to the privacy pane for a couple seconds, and then removing it. Spotlight will rebuild the index for that volume.
    I've had what you mention occur maybe twice in the past 3 years with Spotlight, and rebuilding the index has resolved it both times.

  • New iMac 24 inch, 2.93 GH problems with spotlight and finder

    Has anyone had problems with Spotlight flickering in the upper right corner of the screen with each keystroke and the Finder crashing and relaunching when trying to open certain folders copied from an older computer running 10.4.11 or trying to open home folders on G5 and G4 computers over a local network? I have now received two replacements for my original machine from Amazon.com and all three machines have the same problem. This has been going on for nearly three weeks. I have never had problems like this with Apple products before - and have used them since 1985. Is there a design defect in the new 2.93 GH 24 inch iMac? I have been in touch with Apple Support but no one has resolved the problem and none of the product specialists are using this particular model of new computer. Very frustrating!

    HI Edwin,
    Check the iMac hard disk for errors. Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
    Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger and later) and launch Disk Utility.
    Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
    Select First Aid in the Main panel.
    (Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel. It should say: Verified)
    Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
    If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
    If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
    Carolyn

  • Finding file with Spotlight

    How do I find a file with Spotlight? Or, more to the point, why does Spotlight make it soooo hard to find the location of files?
    Example: I want to find file "foo.xls". I type in "foo.xls" into Spotlight and sure enough, there it is! Great! Er .. but wait. All Spotlight lets me do is OPEN the file. I don't want to do that, I just want to know where it is; what folder it is in.
    How do I do that? I can't right-click on items in the Spotlight result list (why not? isn't this what most users would do?). I can't press spacebar for quicklook. I can't seem to do ANYTHING with Spotlight EXCEPT open the file.
    I presume there is some hidden shortcut key involving some obscure combination of option+command etc etc, but how am I supposed to know that? Isn't this supposed to be easy?
    This is, to say the least, very frustrating.
    --Tim

    In 10.6 and prior, the user would need only hover over the item in Spotlight's results and a yellow flag would appear with the location. In 10.7, a new Spotlight feature emerged, the preview, so the yellow flag is gone.
    Use Finder's Spotlight instead in the upper right of the Finder window. You can always use Finder's "Show Path Bar" view, so that, after doing a Finder Spotlight search, you can single click on a file and see the path listed at the bottom of the window.

  • Finding directory content size with Spotlight.

    Ok, I know how to do this in terminal. But I've been attempting to "gui-ize" myself more and try to explore the power of spotlight.
    Problem:
    Find all directories in my Home folder whose contents exceed 500mb.
    I tried using two conditions:
    Kind: Folder
    Size: Greater than: 500mb
    However, since technically the size of all directories themselves are zero this search returns zero results.
    Is such a search possible with spotlight or are "power searches" like this only able to be done via the terminal?

    If you put the search window into List view (I tinkered with a plist so this is my default view for search windows) and have the column for Size enabled (should be by default, if not do View->Show View Options), then do a search on Kind: Folder and click on the Size column it will list all the folders arranged by size. It is acutally pretty speedy: I have 1500 folders in my Home folder and this was actually much faster than if you use a Finder window with the option to calculate sizes and arrange by Size and mass open the folders.... I'll have to remember this in future! I added it to my Saved Searches, although it didn't save with the Size column checked.
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • Searching for scripts with Spotlight

    I decided to ask this question on this forum because AppleScripters are the most likely to search for scripts with Spotlight.
    *First, here’s what seems to be the normal behavior of Spotlight:*
    If I open the folder “/Users/pierre/Documents/Loisirs/Informatique/Utilisation avancée/AppleScript”, type ⌘F and enter “Kind is Other” and “script” as the search criterion, I get 89 items in the +Searching “AppleScript”+ window.
    On the other hand, if I replace the previous criterion with “File extension is scpt”, I get 88 items in the +Searching “AppleScript”+ window, which is normal since one of my scripts is a script bundle, whose extension is “scptd”.
    Next, if I open my home folder, type ⌘F again and enter “Kind is Other” and “script” as the search criterion, I get 110 items in the +Searching “pierre”+ window, which again is normal since many of my scripts are outside of my “AppleScript” folder.
    *Now, here’s what looks like a bug:*
    If I replace the previous criterion with “File extension is scpt” in my home folder, I get only 3 items (instead of 109) in the +Searching “pierre”+ window, which obviously is nonsense.
    I have rebuilt permissions and reindexed Spotlight, without any difference.
    Any explanation?

    Hi Pierre
    Not a explanation, but a possible solution, try some of these ideas:::
    1) Restart Mac
    2) Rebuild the spot light index manually (I no you said you have done this, this is just a path to follow):
    a) launch terminal
    b) type this sudo mdutil -E /
    c) type in your admin password when prompted
    d) rebuilding index should commence (could take a while)
    3) clear the spot light caches and prefs:
    a) download "Yasu" from here and install
    http://jimmitchelldesign.com/yasu/
    b) enable "Reset System Prefs", "Clear System font Cache", "Clear local font cache", "Clear user font cache"
    click ok
    c) Restart Mac
    4) Kill the SystemUIServer:
    a) launch activity monitor, find process "SystemUIServer" highlight then click button quit process
    hope this helps
    Budgie

  • What has happened with Spotlight? Can't find files anymore. Why?

    Apparently I have two iPhoto libraries. When I use Spotlight to find them, I get an iPad user guide as the first return. One library is in Pictures. If I search that Finder folder for iTunes Library, search finds nothing. If I search that folder for iPhoto it returns iPhoto Slideshows, a file that follows after the iPhoto library file. If I use Spotlight, it returns hundreds of unrelated files. Not useful.
    If I double-click the library in Pictures, I get this message in iPhoto: Do you want to switch the current iPhoto Library from “iPhoto Library” to “iPhoto Library” and relaunch iPhoto?
    I suspect if I do, I'll never find the library that is now open. How'd I get two libraries? I didn't do that.
    My main question: Why doesn't Spotlight return the location of the file I'm looking for?
    Seems to me I've been finding files very efficiently with Spotlight for years, but this new version is almost useless.

    Yes, I've done that. I just did it again in response your suggestion. Had a fusion disk problem s few days ago; had to wipe it and restore so I'm working with a  clean system.   Should have been indexed... I dropped my whole hard disk in the privacy space; nothing happened. Then I dropped iMac Home; I could see it was indexing. But nothing changed...
    Today the problem was searching for a library and I wondered if Spotlight is coded to not find such Apple created fundamentals.... But daily, no matter what I'm searching for, even if I find it, it is not as efficient as it used to be.
    Maybe I'm just a grouchy old man, but it seems to me Spotlight was better before it was improved.

  • ILife '09 - problems with spotlight preferences after install

    +I also posted this over in the iLife forum, but had to post in the iPhoto topic because Apple doesn't have a general iLife topic. Posting again here because the issue is more directly related to spotlight, I just think iLife '09 install had something to do with it.+
    Installed iLife '09 on 3 machines yesterday and all are having issues with spotlight prefs. Here's a general idea:
    1) Installed iLife '09
    2) Forced reboot after install
    3) After reboot, spotlight shortcut (cmd+Space) still working. However getting into spotlight preferences often crashes the preferences pane. If the pref pane loads, spotlight preferences showing odd settings:
    http://i379.photobucket.com/albums/oo233/netnothing/Picture1.png
    Notice the missing items in the list as well as the missing shortcut keys for spotlight.
    4) After a second reboot....spotlight shortcut key no longer assigned. Going into spotlight prefs doesn't save the prefs. HAve to go into Keyboard & Mouse to reset and save the spotlight shortcut keys.
    5) Still have the issue of the missing items in the spotlight list.
    Looks as if something with installing iLife '09 has messed with spotlight preferences.
    Anyone else see this same behavior?
    I have tried:
    - permissions repair
    - verify disk
    - trash spotlight prefs
    None helped. Again, this EXACT thing happening on all 3 machines, so I think it's related to the iLife '09 install.
    -Kevin
    Message was edited by: netnothing

    I am looking to purchase a new macbook, are you saying, with the software included, I should immediately check for software updates for iLife 09, since it is stated on apple store that it will be included with my mac, in order to make sure spotlight words properly?

  • "Alias not found" when opening a non-alias folder with Spotlight

    Good morning everyone,
    I'm noticing a strange behaviour when browsing through the finder. When I go to a folder (for example, /Users/AeroCross/Dropbox) I have various subfolders. I press CmdShiftF (find by filename) to search for a folder (for example Dropbox/Work/Informs). When the folder "Today" appears in the serach results, I double-click it to enter, then this message appears: http://cl.ly/4wXm - notice that the folder "Informs" is NOT an alias (and there are no aliases around, neither, I don't use them).
    It happens with any subfolder folder I search with Spotlight. Can anyone reproduce this problem? Anyone has a solition or something?
    P.S: Fix alias does nothing. It just closes the dialog window and that's it. Either way, the error won't reproduce until a later time.

    Yeah, there were some problems with this earlier, pre-Snow, but now it is a constant problem, and a very strange one. As I recall, the earlier problem happened with all sorts of things, not just folders. AFAIK the easiest work-around is to select the folder, then at the bottom of the search window you'll see the path to the selected item. Double click the folder there and it should open just fine. Also, very weirdly indeed, if you double click the folder it actually DOES open, but the error box appears on top of it, and when you dismiss it the Finder window returns to its previous state, however if you go to the Finder Go menu item, and select "Recent Folders" the folder you just opened but couldn't access is listed! You can access it just fine from there.
    It happens with any subfolder folder I search with Spotlight.
    I have not been able to determine what "rule" determines which folders won't open. Some folders returned in a search window will open just fine, others in the same search results window don't. Also, once you have opened the folder thru other means (using the path at the bottom of the window, or the Recent Folders menu), it will then open directly from the search window with a double click.
    Francine
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • Searching work servers with Spotlight

    Having issues with Spotlight, it seems to be working fine locally but cannot retrieve the files and folders required from any servers that we have in our office, which is frustrating when looking for older files on our Archive etc...
    Is there a preference that I need to click on to allow this?
    Any help would be appreciated,
    Thanks.
    G5 Apple Mac   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    First of all, Tiger's Spotlight technology is not intended for Window servers. (See below)
    Spotlight Support for Network Homes
    "Perform a Spotlight search on network-based Home directories in addition to searching local hard drives."
    Leopard will expand to search on servers running Mac OS X Leopard Server. http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spotlight.html
    "The Spotlight store retains information that the plug-ins extract in two separate indexes: one for metadata and the other for content. This provides important performance benefits, because Spotlight doesn’t waste time looking through its massive content index unless specifically requested. Each index is created on a per-volume basis, which means each disk or partition carries its own set of indexes for the information on that volume.
    Spotlight works with most locally mounted volumes that can be read and written to, including FireWire and USB/ flash drives. Some volumes, such as Windows-formatted drives, are not indexed automatically. You can change this easily by opening the Info window for the volume in the Finder." http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSXSpotlightTB.pdf
    For sure if you are searching network drives, use Command-f and make sure that the drive (volume) you are searching in is shared (connected) and selected. Keep in mind that the volume you are searching in may not be indexible, e.g., CDs, but can be searched using the (old) Find command.

  • Is tagging files necessary with Spotlight?

    I'm an attorney, so I save a lot of case law on my computer. They are usally PDFs. I've thought about adding tags to the files so that I can search certain legal terms. However, the legal terms (the tags I would use) are all words and phrases that are used within the files. With Spotlight I can just type the word or phrase and the files using them show up in the search result without the file ever having been tagged. If all that I'm ever searching are these words or phrases that are already used within the file, would there be any benefit to tagging these files with the words or phrases?

    X423424X wrote:
    On the subject of spotlight tags
    (1) Let's get one thing straight. (I thought I had done that when I wrote "edit a PDF in Acrobat".) We're not talking Spotlight tags (even if they exist). We're talking PDF tags. These are read and understood by any app which understands the PDF document information dictionary (see PDF Reference, 6th edition, §10.2.1), which is the most basic level (we'll ignore metadata streams). These stay with the document, and get carried over with the document; which means not only that they'll be understood by any properly designed PDF manager, but that they will be used also on Windows, Linux, and so on. IOW, the investment of work on tagging these files is not only not tied to Spotlight, it is not even tied to Mac OS X. Hence, definitely worth doing, AFAIC.
    Personally I don't waste my time remembering various properties spotlight can use
    (2) À chacun son goût, maître. (I find that it's not remembering that takes time -- faster hard drive, maybe?) The point of the little trick was answering the OP's question, ie, using Spotlight to search for PDF tags only. As to remembering, well, there are such things as saved searches and 'smart folders'. Moreover, anyone who can handle the spelling and pronunciation of sundry Anglo-Norman juicy bits like "avowtry", "postremogeniture", "nuncupative will", or "writ of oyer & terminer" will hardly have a coughing fit over two measly kMDItem keywords, now will he?
    I use spotlight for basic filename
    (3) IMHO, that's exactly where SL falls very short; but, to each his own. As anyone who's read my posts knows, I can hardly be described as a fan of SL. In my case, 99% of my searches are of filenames, and, unfortunately, there's no replacement for SL that fits my needs. None of the three apps I use on a regular basis (John R Chang's Find File, Thomas Tempelmann's FindAnyFile, and Christian Grünenberg's EasyFind) are a complete replacement for the Find utility in Panther. As to my PDFs, I manage those with EndNote. I don't recommend it (it's really not a PDF manager at all), but I have a lot of data in it and haven't found yet something worth converting to. But I'm not a lawyer; if I were, I'd certainly take a very close look at DevonThink.
    On the subject of spotlight tags, although I never use them, there's even a utility for them as well.  It's called TagIt.
    (4) I would urge some degree of caution when considering TagIt. It's not a "spotlight tags" utility (in fact, are there any "spotlight tags", other than comments?); it's really part of OpenMeta; the developer, Ironic Software, lately seems missing in action, and Yep, their foremost product, hasn't been updated in quite some time. Unlike PDF metadata, OpenMeta is not cross-platform and it is not transferable.

  • Searching inside PDFs ... maybe even with spotlight?

    Does anybody know of an application that lets me archive and search all my paper bound documents?
    While there are some applications on Windows (such as ScanSnap) I've not seen anything on the Mac. The workflow I have in mind is to scan a document and then somehow being able to search for words in that document - but with no manual tagging - ideally with spotlight.
    Any suggestions?

    Thanks for your input so far. I realize that .pdfs are just images, so please let me elaborate.
    In more technical terms, what I'm looking for is this:
    A utility that scans to .pdf and then runs the document through its OCR engine. It then adds the full text of the .pdf to the file as spotlight comments. This would preserve the original layout and yet make its content searchable without manual tagging.

  • Browsing photos with Spotlight?

    Hello everybody!
    When I search some photos with spotlight is there any way to browse with the spotlight "slideshow" those folders spotlight find?
    I mean, I have photos of cars in a folder named "cars". When I search for car photos I have the searchword "cars" and I find that folder (cars), is there now any way to see those photos inside that cars-folder with the spotlight? Or should all the files be somehow named "cars"... I hope you got my point.
    Thanks in advance!
    -pd
      Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

    I have quite a few things that show up with the search term "flowers"--some image files (which you can see in slideshow by pressing the play button in the Spotlight window view), and a couple of folders. The easiest way to view a slideshow of the items in one of the folders is to double click the the folder in the Spotlight window, which opens that folder. Then select all the items, and control-click on one, and select "Slideshow" from the contextual menu.
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • Audibook files can be found and played on the iphone only with spotlight. Help me get them to show and play.

    I download audiobooks to Overdrive console, then all parts are transfered to iphone 4s with IOS 7.1. Files can be found and played on phone only with spotlight. This is a difficult procedure for my wife. Help me to show and play audiobooks downloaded from library using Overdrive. Tried Sync and beboot several timnes.
    Thanks in advance

    I used it once for audiobooks with a phone that had iOS 6, and the audiobook was transferred into the music app.
    I think the audiobook in question was in the WMA format, though, and was converted to MP3 in iTunes and then transferred to my phone, now that I think about it a bit more.
    There is a program/app for the computer that can play liason between phone and computer, rather than just using the app on the iPhone.  That could be contributing to the issue here.
    ~Lyssa

  • How do I search for just a folder with Spotlight

    How do I search for a folder with Spotlight, not a file?  Spotlight is a great tool for finding a file, but often I just want to locat a folder.
    When I find a file, how to I see the path to this file?
    These are probably obvious question for longtime Mac users, but I come from the Windows world.

    Activate the Finder's window. Put the folder name in the search field in the Finder's toolbar. Enter COMMAND-F which should change the Finder's window and give a toolbar above the column headers:
    If you click on the dropdown menu with "Any" you will see this:
    Select the "Folder" entry.

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