Tags and finder search not working after clean install of macOS

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Level 1

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Tags and finder search not working after clean install of macOS

When I click on a tag on the sidebar none of my files appear even they they clearly have the relevant coloured tag. It seems to work fine for newly tagged files but for the hundreds of files previously tagged it won't appear.

Finder searches do not work as well. Only some files appear but not the one that I need.

Everything was working fine before the clean install of macOS and restoring files only from a Time Machine backup.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.0

Posted on Oct 1, 2020 9:35 PM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

112,542 points

Oct 2, 2020 6:36 AM in response to erahi

The Spotlight index is recreated when you update. It may have failed to complete correctly after the update.

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

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Answer 2

erahi Author

Level 1

24 points

Oct 30, 2020 4:52 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you! This works now.

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Answer 3

Oct 2, 2020 7:45 AM in response to erahi

The Spotlight reserved word in English speaking countries for tags is tag, or kMDItemUserTags, but in German speaking countries it is only the latter.

I have a PDF document on my Desktop with three custom name tags assigned to it. Formally, I could find it with:

kind:pdf (tag:location AND tag:managerie AND tag:unique)

but I know I can find it specifically with just one, or possibly two tag names.

kind:pdf (tag:location AND tag:managerie)

If you perform a clean install, and then restore from a recent Time Machine backup, those files previously tagged will be restored with active tags on them.

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Answer 4

Nov 20, 2020 7:41 AM in response to Barney-15E

thank you that fixed my issue with my tags not working.

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Tags and finder search not working after clean install of macOS

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