Spotlight finding/showing duplicate bookmarks

Question

Spotlight finding/showing duplicate bookmarks

Hi all,

I'm having some difficulty figuring out why Spotlight is finding and showing duplicate bookmarks. I've moved Camino bookmarks, Omniweb bookmarks, and caches into the privacy area so they are not searched, but I'm still getting duplicates. Maybe there's another bookmark file lurking somewhere or does Spotlight only index Safari bookmarks? The funny thing is that when I pull up details of the duplicate bookmark, the finder can't seem to find its system location (at least that how it seems).

Any ideas for a solution

iMac G5 20 2 Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Posted on Feb 7, 2006 10:24 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 8, 2006 8:20 AM in response to sillyputty1967

Did you try searching on the word bookmark? I did and found that I have a bookmarks folder and a bookmarksbackup folder. The latter has a number of bookmark files. Perhaps this is why you're seeing multiple listings. (I searched for one of my bookmarks and also Spotlight found two bookmarks).

Jim

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Answer 2

Feb 9, 2006 6:41 AM in response to JimHarrington

I searched my system for bookmark, and the search does reveal duplicates. The odd thing is that when I do the search from the Finder, revealing details of each duplicate bookmark reveals that one is located in Home/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/ folder and the other does not reveal a location. The other odd thing is that upon doing the search, the names of the bookmarks are clearly labeled, but once you click on them (say to get more information), they change to really long weird names like "56507BE2-82DE-11D9-8C78-000A95D25CD8.webbookmark." One of them usually works and the other (the one that doesn't report a system location) does not.

The other detail I can offer is that when I tell Spotlight not to index Safari's metadata cache, bookmarks no longer show up in Spotlight search results.

Hmmmm.

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Answer 3

Feb 9, 2006 5:51 PM in response to sillyputty1967

I think I figured it out. Strangely enough, when I put the "Library" folder located under my login account into the privacy area of Spotlight so that the folder is not indexed, my duplicate bookmarks disappeared. Sort of a weird way of fixing my problem since Safari bookmarks are located in the "Library" folder last I checked.

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Answer 4

Feb 9, 2006 6:09 PM in response to sillyputty1967

Okay, I didn't quite figure it out. Turns out that if you put your entire "Library" folder in Spotlight's privacy area, contacts are no longer accessible in Spotlight searches. So, it looks like I have narrowed down the problematic folder within "Library": "Metadata." As soon as I put this folder in the privacy area, duplicate bookmarks are gone and contacts are searchable again. Voila!

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