Spotlight stopped searching inside text documents

Spotlight associates files whose extension are .doc or .docx as kind:word, and those with .txt as kind:text. The operating system also builds a launch services database that gives you that list of applications to select from on the right-click open with menu — based on the document extension.

I would recommend not using .doc as the file extension for plain text as OpenOffice can save, and open files with the .txt extension too. If you simply do not want TextEdit as the default when double-clicking on .txt files, then in Get Info change it to OpenOffice.

Try:

kind:word word

kind:word "multiple words"

kind:word " word "

kind:word name:foo " word "

The last one would find all .doc/.docx that have the string foo in their names and have a search word surrounded by white-space.

Barebones Textwrangler or Grep will offer searching text content without needing to utilize the Spotlight index.

Sorry for this hyjack here but for your "El Capitan System (10.11) requirements for upgrade"

I cannot find any way to comment on the post or any way to reply to you except this.

In response to your question in that post -

I can verify it will install 10.11 on something newer than 10.6.8 .

I just reinitialized my disk on my MBP early '08, installed a clean 10.8.5 using a restore on a usb drive I had

then I downloaded the file and upgraded to El Capitan from there.

It took almost an hour to download and 45 min. to install.

OS works fine - but I have issues installing my applications (Pages, Numbers, etc.) now.

Apple wrote the requirements in their store. I take them at their literal word. The fact certain apps don’t work may be an issue with their installed version vs. the operating system. http://www.roaringapps.com and the system requirements will clue whether or not they should run. 10.10 or later should run, 10.7 or later may not, as the hardware requirements differ.

Hey Bob, I've continued our discussion about the El Capitan download on:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250135800

As this spec I want to know if there are others who have succeeded. I know that before Sierra's release it was possible to install El Capitan from the App Store as well on any system from Lion to Yosemite. This should prove interesting if the current edition is as flexible or not.