Moved location of mail another partition. Mail works fine, but Spotlight will not index.

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Level 1

1 points

Moved location of mail another partition. Mail works fine, but Spotlight will not index.

Successfully moved mail to another partition ~ however not getting Spotlight (or Mail) to index or search email since the move.

Tried adding the folder to Spotlight privacy settings ~ then removing but no luck.

Tried contacting Apple however moving mail from Libraries is not 'supported' so no love there.

Anyone w/an idea on how to get Spotlight to search mail residing on another partition?

Thank you for any insight! 😉

Please do not resopnd w/something like "Why would you want to move Mail out of the Library". Lots of reasons.

Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Mar 23, 2012 10:11 AM

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Answer 1

twtwtw

Level 5

4,936 points

Mar 23, 2012 10:59 AM in response to PixelRogue

You can try importing the folder directly in terminal. the command would be something like:

mdimport /path/to/folder

or

mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/Mail.mdimporter /path/to/folder

However, if Mail's mdimporter was written with a dependency on the user library (as might be he case, since the normal case would be to exclude mail files from other directries) you may be SOL.

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Answer 2

PixelRogue Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 23, 2012 12:03 PM in response to twtwtw

When I see the word 'import' it sounds like I will end up having two of the same folder...and the second folder (newly imported) would not update over time.

Not familiar w/mdimporter etc.... however thought there were ways to add other partitions, hard drives etc. for Spotlight. It works for everything else, why not mail?

File Vault aside for the moment, what other ways are there to secure email in the event there is physical access to one's laptop? Would hate to give up searching capabilities for improved security?

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Answer 3

twtwtw

Level 5

4,936 points

Mar 23, 2012 12:19 PM in response to PixelRogue

it imports data from the messages into spotlight, it doesn't make a new folder. and as I said above, spotlight uses special 'mdimporter' modules to import different kinds of files, so it's not just a question of file system structure, but also of the limits of the module itself.

basically, when you tell spotlight to index a folder or partition, it does the following,

checks to see if the folder/partition (or parts thereof) are excluded by privacy settings
runs through each file in the heirarchy and checks if it has an importer to handle that kind of file
processes the file through the importer.

failure at any of the three steps will mean that no data is imported from that object.

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