Spotlight Indexing and Searching Disabled

Dave Vivian has always been a stand up guy who helped me anticipate my last experience with an iMac previous to the one I am now using which was equipped with a SSD/and 3.5 drive (Fusion was the name of this offering?). In any case, when I contacted Dave as a long time SuperDuper user and posed a situation I was experiencing with an alert from SuperDuper, Dave realized the Fusion Drive would soon fail. In time, I had to contact Apple and report this. My tech support person was very slow to consider that this was inevitable. But, Dave, in his usual style for doing things supplied me with logs that I then submitted to Apple's tech support person. Eventually, I gained his support. He then passed the logs to a senior team who reviewed them and concluded I was wrong. But Dave provided me with subsequent logs from my SuperDuper which were incontrovertible and Apple arranged for an independent repair service to come to my location, remove my iMac, replace the drive with a brand new one. Two or three months later, I read that Apple had recalled a large number of drives or would accept customers whose computers were equipped with the same drives. It's clear that with Dave as a supportive person he is, when Apple is in the equation, it's not watching or wondering what happened, it's making it happen. Glad, Al, that Dave helped you recover what Apple's macOS wrought.

My story with my iMac with Monterey already upgraded to by me with this and that not quite right. Prior to that update, I experienced a loss of the search function in Outlook. But only in Outlook for Mac. I was fortunate enough to contact Microsoft's tech support who agreed to help me over a phone call support session and succeeded in fixing the issue. But with the 12.1 build, the search function was inoperable. And the fix, i.e., moving Mac HD to SpotLight in System Preferences and to the Privacy Tab then removing Mac HD and adding Profile 15 which was accessed by the Go Function, and then removing Profile 15, then discovering that in the first curative session I could see Spotlight indexing hinted at by a spinning gear within the Spotlight Privacy tab area. But in the second instance, Spotlight had not been successfully "nudged" to index and restore the search function for emails and contacts within Outlook For Mac. And Outlook for Mac's tech support staff only accessible via a chat channel within Outlook assured me that it was Apple that broke Outlook and it would take time for a restoration. Sorry for the long preamble. Unhappily, I waited for that outcome to materialize. Finally a few days ago when Office auto-updater informed me build 16.57 was available to update Office for Mac, my intuition and a highly motivated wish-it-were-so believed this build would cure Outlook's broken trigger to prompt Spotlight to index emails and contacts. And build 16.57 did just that with no fuss. I am glad for Al that Dave Vivian was available to cure what ailed you. Incidentally, I, too, have a recently purchased Mac mini M1 to replace a perfectly excellent 6core Mac mini late 2018 populated with 32GB of memory. I updated Big Sur with Monterey, but have neglected to update Monterey on the M1 to 12.1. Now with your prompts for a cure (though I am not sure I get exactly how to go about the cure), while I have no wish to update to 12.1, your excellent information is comforting. You and Dave deserve high recognition for providing a cure for Apple's latest Mac-ination that turned Outlook for Mac into a still giant of a program and I had to make excuses to many who I dealt with when required to supply data in various forms for various outcomes. Well done! Thank you. Best, REShaman

Al, I knew that! I just decided to join you in the Dave Nanian you decided on (smile). Thank you for correcting us both (I do know his correct last name, I was just bonding with you). I only mentioned the story because Apple can act in a very controlling manner and sometimes one needs the clarity and credentials of a Dave Nanian who knows how to assist a person less knowledgeable but on the correct side of a situation that could be ultimately hurtful. I gather that there are expected consequences when one chooses a brand, and engineers who innovate and the fall out when something new is introduced and we are the voluntary or obligatory beta testers to report back and let our audience of developers know what we encounter on the path they lay out for us. It's good we have resources. Your sharing what you learned benefits us all. And it's great that Dave Nanian cares to share his expertise and experience to help us (in this case), perhaps, help our developers. Enjoy the pathway. Stay safe. Best personal regards, REShaman