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Search not working in Finder and Spotlight in El Capitan

Hello. I'm running El Capitan 10.11.6 on a MacBook Pro.


I have absolutely no search functionality in Finder, and Spotlight is only searching a Dictionary, Thesaurus, Apple, and Wikipedia, not my computer.


Here are some suggestions I've found online that haven't worked for me.


I've tried adding my hard drive to Privacy in System Preferences > Spotlight, but I get the following error message: Privacy List Error - The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error.


I tried going into terminal and entering mdutil -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

but I get Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning


I tried locate .metadata_never_index

but I get The locate database (/var/db/locate.database) does not exist.


I tried sudo mdutil -E /

but I get Index is already changing state. Please try again in a moment.


I don't know enough to know what to do next. I know how to use my computer to do what I need to do, but not how to fix stuff like this.


I would appreciate any help!


Thanks.


Sue

MacBook Pro 13", OS X 10.11

Posted on May 1, 2020 9:27 AM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

Hello,


Have you tried the instructions in this Apple Support document?


How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

Posted on May 1, 2020 10:53 AM

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Search not working in Finder and Spotlight in El Capitan

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