spotlight finding but not opening files

Try it by entering into safe mode. If it works properly there, then one of your 3rd party programs or utilities that run in the background, may be interfering with Spotlight. Then it would be a matter of trial and error until you find which program your running would be causing the problem. If you find that it works fine in safe mode, do a normal login (not safe mode) and go into System Settings | General | Login Items, and disable all of them. Try using Spotlight. If it works properly, then enable each item in the Login Items, one by one, testing Spotlight each time until you find which one is interfering.

Good news,

It turns out, in my case at least, the problem was Dropbox's latest version which forces they sync folder to the Library.

Reindexing Spotlight solved may case. I hope it does your's too.

My other post tells the story and includes the link to apple support to perform the task.

Click here:

Ventura Spotlight not opening some files,… - Apple Community

and here:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support (IE)

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support (IE)

For the records.... I repeat my reply above... My issue was with ANY application, but for only SOME files (i.e. some PDF, xls, numbers etc etc would open, others not). The issue, as I discovered, was Dropbox.

I am now looking for their address and tax number to send them my invoice for the time wasted. :-)

This keeps happening to me on a new Mac Studio, Mac OS 14.5 (latest at the time).

Restarting fixes it but that is a lot to ask for every time this happens.

I found that if you go to the Activity Monitor and force the "Spotlight" process to quit, it will automatically relaunch and then everything works again. For a while anyway.

denisefromfarmington Said:

"spotlight finding but not opening files: The spotlight finder finds files I'm looking for on my 2022 Macbook Air with Ventura OS, but I can't get any of them to open from Spotlight. I've tried clicking on the files once, twice, but nothing happens. Ideas please?"

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Selecting iTunes in Spotlight:

Use the up and down arrow keys, and press the return key to open it.

None of this makes sense. Excel files I work with daily, all was perfectly fine with previous OS

Changed to Ventura and very frustratingly, no file opens from spotlight. Even if just opened in some other way a few hours ago. They do show, e.g. as Excel files, but will not open. To me it looks like a bug, a very nasty one that makes Ventura 30% useless..

What does work, yet taking the 3 extra steps, below....:

• Srolling down to the very bottom of results (a few pages, because spotlight decides to show a lot of irrlevant stuff from Safari along the way)
• Select open in Finder
• Open from there (result is ok, desired file on top)

This "workaround" is nothing new, it used to work that way before, if ever needed to.

I have the same issue, i.e. Spotlight search -> select file (in OneDrive!) -> Nothing happens. I tried re-indexing and it doesn't help (why would it? the search itself works fine, it's just launching the file that doesn't work)

No direct solution, but FYI, as mentioned by a couple others, this looks to be an issue with Microsoft OneDrive: Spotlight on Mac cannot no longer access/open OD files, even when - Microsoft Community

Updating to .3 fixed it.

Yet another Apple bug they wont acknowledge but then quietly fix in update.

Now if they would make the "command hover" useful so you can actually read the path when the hit you're hovering on is a light background...

Update: I left out an important step. First, each activity monitor for "md" and force quit all the md whatever processes (not mDNS stuff though). Then force quit the spotlight process. That fixes the issue for me - temporarily.

After updating to 13.3 the issue was resolved for me

Ventura 13.3 fixed it. Just update and try.

It fixed with update to OS X 13.3.1

FreddyL Said:

“Please notice OP already says that. Thnanls anyway- Just hoping this issue is seen by apple and does something about it. All other comments have not read the OP or are pointless. Thanks anyway”

———-

You didn’t grasp my point:

Use you Keyboard as an Alternative:

Use your keyboard to select it all and maneuver through Stoplight, rather than clicking with you mouse.

This is happening to me as well. but i noticed it only happens with files that are stored within dropbox in the folder Library>CloudStorage>Dropbox. Spotlight will find the file but will not open them. Also, the icon of the file is not the usual icon. It shows the Finder icon.

If I search for a file in the Downloads folder for example, then spotlight will find AND open the file.

This is a new location that Dropbox moved the files to recently.

I think this is a special folder and perhaps this "not opening" could be due to some security settings or even a bug in the OS.