mdworker32 takes up 97% of CPU all the time?

I've deleted stuffit and problem has gone.

My issuses with mdworker started when I realized spotlight didn't work properly.
Rebuilt spotlight using the standard procedure, but it still didn't work properly.
After a while, removing those DYLD conflict messages from the system log, spotlight started work normally again, no more progress wheel during searches. What I did was that I removed everything that caused a DYLD conflict message. Then I booted into safe mode. Then I used ONYX and cleaned the kernel and applications caches, in fact every cache but the browser history.

I realize this isn't exactly what might help you. But the cleaning is worth trying after having removed all offensive elements from the console log.

Regards

MacGeek

Hi, I had this problem today and following the thread suggestions:
- delete the mdimporters did not work
- check on activity viewer to see the open files for mdworker32 ---> there was an open excel file, which was giving me problems also on excel ---> solution: exclude this directory from spotlight indexing.

Hope this helps.

This is the fix that seems ti have worked for me after spending two days trying to figure out wht Time Machine wouldn't back up. I only removed the MicrosoftOffice.mdimporter, I DID NOT uninstall MS Office. Couple of questions:
Are there any downsides of removing this file?
As I did not have this problem before, any idea if my installation of MS Office for Windows on my virtual machine could have been the problem?

Thanks

worked for me too, thanks!

Wow thanks. For me it was one particular .xlsb excel file. I opened and then saved it as a regular .xlsx and then removed the .xlsb file. Funny thing is then mdworker was all over the .xlsb file in .Trash, so emptied my trash and everything seems normal now.

David

Running Office 2011 Beta, this issue raised its ugly head when using Excel 2011. Steps to resolve:

Activity monitor, select the mdworker32 process, click "inspect" and select "Open Files & Ports"
there was a single xlsx excel document (that was closed) listed. I opened the doc, saved as a regular old xls, quit excel, trashed the xlsx document and emptied the trash.

CPU returned to normal.

this actually worked... i deleted stuffit and the CPU is back to normal...
It just started after i updated Stuffit to the newest version, i hadn't had the problem before this newest version.

This issue flared up for me as well. I don't use office, but iWork. It only took up 87% of my cpu cycles and then subsided. It returned and took up 92% and continues. I have not had enough time to troubleshoot, but will try later.

I have had some time to do further trouble shooting. The issue appears to be related to one external USB hard drive. All other drives are firewire and do not provoke the mdworker32 process. If I attach my ipod through usb it is not a problem. If I connect another USB drive, there is no problem. This drive itself is the issue. Any ideas…

OverPoweredFred's solution of removing Macintosh>Library>Spotlight>Microsoft Office.mdimporter
worked for me

I was having this issue as well. It just started the other day, and I found out that Spotlight had decided to start indexing my Time Machine backup drive. To fix this, I simply went into System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy, and added the Time Machine drive to the list of objects not to scan. Haven't seen the problem since.

I had this problem and excluded a particularly big excel file (a data set with more than 65 000 rows) from the indexing (system pref/spotlight/privacy) and the problem went away.

Thanks for you help all.

I ran into this as well, but only after the latest 10.6.6 update. I couldn't locate any Excel files causing the issue, but did see the office importer file listed for mdworker32 so I removed it and quit mdworker32 so it would spawn a new one and my CPU is now normal. Would kind of figure some from MS would hose up an Apple system...

problem fixed by excluding the Microsoft office 2008 folder.

Brian