can spotlight search excel sheets?

Question

can spotlight search excel sheets?

When I do a Spotlight or Finder search, for something I know is in one of the .xls sheets on the computer, it is not found . . .

Posted on Jan 25, 2022 12:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,254 points

Jan 25, 2022 12:43 PM in response to trailrunner117

I just exported a Numbers table as an .xlsx and using the following Spotlight syntax, I can find text strings in its table. Assumption: I have Spreadsheets selected in Spotlight's Search Results categories.

kind:excel "Abbie"

Then I opened this .xlsx in LibreOffice Calc v7.2.5 and exported it to a different Excel 2007 - 365 XLSX document. Deleted the original .xlsx and Spotlight worked as it did above for the newly saved Excel spreadsheet. I don't have MS Office, so this is as close as I can get. It might be a good idea to see if Spotlight works on Excel spreadsheets not stored on One Drive, but rather, on the local startup drive.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 31, 2022 2:49 PM in response to trailrunner117

It took some wandering around the web, etc, but the problem is solved. It is based on Terminal, using sudo, and

Usage: mdutil -pEsa -i (on|off) -d volume ...

mdutil -t {volume-path | deviceid} fileid

Utility to manage Spotlight indexes.

-i (on|off) Turn indexing on or off.

-d Disable Spotlight activity for volume (re-enable using -i on).

-E Erase and rebuild index.

-s Print indexing status.

-a Apply command to all stores on all volumes.

-t Resolve files from file id with an optional volume path or device id.

-p Publish metadata.

-V vol Apply command to all stores on the specified volume.

-v Display verbose information.

-r plugins Ask the server to reimport files for UTIs claimed by the listed plugin.

-L volume-path List the directory contents of the Spotlight index on the specified volume.

-P volume-path Dump the VolumeConfig.plist for the specified volume.

-X volume-path Remove the Spotlight index directory on the specified volume. Does not disable indexing.

Spotlight will reevaluate volume when it is unmounted and remounted, the

machine is rebooted, or an explicit index command such as 'mdutil -i' or 'mdutil -E' is

run for the volume.

NOTE: Run as owner for network homes, otherwise run as root.

to dump the plist, remove the index, and turn indexing back on. Now works correctly.

Reply

Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

157,896 points

Jan 25, 2022 12:44 PM in response to trailrunner117

Being curious I just tried using Spotlight to search for a text string in an Excel spreadsheet on my Mac mini (also running macOS Monterey) and it had no issues finding the Excel file that it was located in. Note that I (by default) save my Office files to my local machine and not to OneDrive. However, Spotlight was capable of finding it there as well if the OneDrive folder is "mounted" on the Mac.

Reply

Answer 4

Jan 25, 2022 2:20 PM in response to Tesserax

I also have the excel sheets on my local drive. Spreadsheets is checked in Spotlight settings. Tried the <kind:excel "search text">, but no better luck. It seems that Spotlight is only searching file names, not contents. Oh, by local drive I mean a mounted sparse image; and Privacy in Spotlight is empty.

Reply

can spotlight search excel sheets?

Similar questions