Spotlight on Catalina no longer returns names of documents. Doesn't even show a category for documents. Have tried several methods of updating the database. I even ended up installing a fresh copy of Catalina on my computer and the problem still persists. What shall I do?
Select the categories that you want Spotlight to index in the System Preferences : Spotlight : Search Results tab.
In the Privacy tab, add any external mounted drives, or Virtual Machine guest containers (if you have them) to the Privacy panel so Spotlight will not index them. Finally, verify that in the Privacy tab, your boot drive does not appear there. If it does, select it, and click [ - ] to remove it. Spotlight indexing of your boot drive will begin immediately afterward.
Select the categories that you want Spotlight to index in the System Preferences : Spotlight : Search Results tab.
In the Privacy tab, add any external mounted drives, or Virtual Machine guest containers (if you have them) to the Privacy panel so Spotlight will not index them. Finally, verify that in the Privacy tab, your boot drive does not appear there. If it does, select it, and click [ - ] to remove it. Spotlight indexing of your boot drive will begin immediately afterward.
Boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isoloate issues with your Mac) and reindex your drive from there. Reboot normally and check to see if you can find documents with Spotlight.
NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing.
1 - boot into the Recovery volume (boot with the Command + R keys held down) and run Disk First Aid on your boot drive with Disk Utility. Reboot normally and test.
2 - download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.
Copy the report
and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report
IMPORTANT:
Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:
ALSO important:
Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the root of the problem.
You did not confirm that in System Preferences : Spotlight : Search Results, that you had Documents, or any other category selected. Omitting these is guaranteed to result in a very brief Spotlight indexing interval. Check these again, as it is crucial to what Spotlight indexes, its duration, and your ability to narrow your search results on Mac.
Open Preferences on your Mac, open Spotlight and check Documents
I tried safe mode several times with no results. I'll probably try it again though. You know what I did? I still have the original MacOS on a separate external hard drive which I never use. I booted up with that OS as my startup drive and when I tried a Spotlight search . . . . everything worked perfectly. It produce so many pages of documents I couldn't believe it. I never indexed Spotlight on the old system or anything. It just worked the first time.
But I still can't do this on OS Catalina. This makes me think the problem is caused by some kind of conflict. The only thing I had in my startup folder was Carbon Copy Cloner. I uninstalled that but it didn't do the trick.
I would guess it's going to be very hard to find this conflict. Wayne
When I take my hard drive out of the Privacy tab and click on Spotlight it shows that indexing is taking place. This lasts for only a short time. I would think it would take quit a while to index the whole drive. And it doesn't make any difference. When I do a search with spotlight it doesn't show me any "documents". I have shut down the computer and started it up again/ disconnected third party peripherals/ Reset the PRAM/Created a new user account and used it/ and Reinstalled Catalina. Nothing seems to work.
All kinds of categories including "documents" are listed and pre-selected in the "Search results" page. I've been fighting with this for several days now. It looks like I'm not going to get anywhere. Maybe I'm overlooking something.
I used this command in terminal and it worked. Spotlight runs like new. . .only took me four days. . .Wayne
spotlight
