kevinfromwythall
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Yosemite: Spotlight. How do I search for Word (doc, docx) files?

How do I search using Spotlight for WORD (docx, doc) files?

Worked OK until I upgraded to Yosemite.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 19, 2014 11:15 AM

by Carolyn Samit,Solvedanswer
Carolyn Samit Carolyn Samit
Level 10 (122,086 points)
Apple Music
A:

Hi ..

 

 

Open System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results

 

Make sure Documents is selected.

 

Then click the Spotlight icon top right corner of your screen.

 

 

You may also need to go to Finder > Preferences > Advanced then make a selection from the:  When performing a serach pop up menu.

 

You can narrow down the search also. Click a clear space on your desktop then click Help from the menu bar top of your screen.

 

Type:  Spotlight   in the search field then click:  Narrow down your search results

Posted on Oct 19, 2014 11:20 AM

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kevinfromwythall

Q: Yosemite: Spotlight. How do I search for Word (doc, docx) files?

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  • by Apenia,

    Apenia Apenia Aug 12, 2015 7:13 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2015 7:13 AM in response to Barney-15E

    As a matter of fact, this worked! Spotlight sees my .docx document again.

     

    This leads to the conclusion, that sudo mdutil -E / is stronger than Apple's method.

     

    Thank you!

  • by Jochen Neese,

    Jochen Neese Jochen Neese Aug 25, 2015 2:08 AM in response to kevinfromwythall
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 25, 2015 2:08 AM in response to kevinfromwythall

    I came across this problem (spotlight not finding contents of .docx files) only yesterday. After some research (no, EasyFind does NOT find these either) I found out that simply renaming the files helps: Rename from .docx to say .docxa and back results in Spotlight finding everything. I then wrote a quick Automator workflow that does the trick: I select a folder in Finder, and for this folder all the .docx files are treated this way (rename twice). Done.

     

    Not really a solution, and maybe not even a workaround, but for fixing a lot of files in one easy step: Great.

     

    BTW: What also helps is opening a docx file from within Word (2011 in my case) and do a "Save as..." This also does the trick, but is admittedly not practical for hundreds of files...

  • by awoodmurray,

    awoodmurray awoodmurray Aug 19, 2016 1:25 PM in response to Jochen Neese
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 19, 2016 1:25 PM in response to Jochen Neese

    I have tried all sorts of things and none of the easier solutions suggested above work reliably, including rebuilding the entire spotlight index (either through the spotlight pane in System Prefs or using sudo mdutil -E / from the terminal) or reindexing specific folders by setting them to private and not via the Spotlight pane in System Prefs. Stochastically, as I try any fix, or try the same one repeatedly, I can either find the content of individual .docx files or not. Huge pain as I have thousands of .docx files. The only thing that works reliably for me is to save as a .doc file. For an individual folder, reindexing that folder will sometimes index the contents of all .docx files and searching for a word like "the" can show you when that's happened.

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