Spotlight finds only some files

For a while, I have had problems with Spotlight not finding files I knew to be on my drive. I have tried in System Preferences making the whole drive unsearchable and then undoing that, forcing the index to be rebuilt. But I just had an experience that gave me some insight into the problem and I'm looking for ideas on where to go.


I just searched for Name matches "call sheet" in my M1 MBP's Find window (running Ventura 13.5.1). Among the results was a pdf in a folder. Going to that folder, I found three additional files containing that string, one more pdf and two were Indesign files. One of the Indesign files was named identically to the one found except for its file extension.


Why would Spotlight have found only one of these if that folder is searchable?


Thanks!

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on Sep 14, 2023 11:41 AM

Reply
2 replies

Sep 14, 2023 11:55 AM in response to Gary Beberman

Spotlight will match any case-insensitive filename anywhere that matches the string provided to the Spotlight name keyword.


name:"call sheet"



If you were wanting to find a PDF that had "call sheet" in its name:


kind:pdf name:"call sheet"


and you can even find all files whose extension matches (in the following example, InDesign):


name:.indd

Sep 15, 2023 6:08 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you very much for responding.


I realize that is what it's supposed to do. But, it isn't behaving that way. For example, in that search for


name:call sheet,


a list of files comes up which includes:


[Client Name]-[Ad Agency Name] 09-15 Call Sheet.pdf


(I'm leaving out the client and ad agency to avoid their being found in a Google search on this, since it has nothing to do with them.)


In that same folder are


[Client Name]-[Ad Agency Name] 09-14 Call Sheet.indd

[Client Name]-[Ad Agency Name] 09-14 Call Sheet.pdf

[Client Name]-[Ad Agency Name] 09-15 Call Sheet.indd


None of which appear in the search results.



Spotlight finds only some files

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