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spotlight not working

Recently spotlight has not been giving me items that are located on my MacBook Air. I have not changed anything. I can be looking at a file in finder, type the name into spotlight and spotlight will not give that as a "find." Is there a setting that I need to change?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on May 5, 2021 7:00 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 5, 2021 7:40 PM

Cyclingbob, open up the spotlight system preference. Click on the Privacy tab and near the bottom of the window there is a + button. Click on the and select your Macintosh HD or the name of the hard disk. This will delete your spotlight index for that drive. I would wait about 60 seconds and then select Macintosh HD from the list and click the '-' and remove it from the list. Your computer will reindex the Macintosh HD. Give it a couple of minutes or so and then try to search for a file.


If this doesn't solve the problem let us know. The solution above fixes most common issues users have with spotlight.


I hope this helps.


Paul

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 5, 2021 7:40 PM in response to cyclingbob

Cyclingbob, open up the spotlight system preference. Click on the Privacy tab and near the bottom of the window there is a + button. Click on the and select your Macintosh HD or the name of the hard disk. This will delete your spotlight index for that drive. I would wait about 60 seconds and then select Macintosh HD from the list and click the '-' and remove it from the list. Your computer will reindex the Macintosh HD. Give it a couple of minutes or so and then try to search for a file.


If this doesn't solve the problem let us know. The solution above fixes most common issues users have with spotlight.


I hope this helps.


Paul

spotlight not working

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