All My Files are missing in Finder

(1) Open Finder

(2) Click on Finder Menu in the menu top bar (CMD,)

(3) Select Preferences

(4) Check the box next to All My Files (or Recent as it is called in High Sierra).

That is it.

All My Files is now "Recents"????????

Why are you posting this in the Lion forum? In Lion, All My Files still exists.

How did this happen & why?????

Apple decided to change the type of search folder to something more useful.

Try reindexing spotlight. Open spotlight system preferences and go to the Privacy tab. Add your hard drive to the list. Wait a few seconds and then remove it. You should then see Spotlight start to index the drive (dot in the spyglass in the status menu area).

All My Files is now "Recents"????????

How did this happen & why?????

Hi,

this happened to me as well, earlier i was deleting some files and while i was deleting files a new window popped up it was a small window from TRASH and it had all the list of the item which I was deleting and every item had Progress bar under it and it seemed like the trash wasnt responding so I tried this

press and hold the power button untill its fully turned off and then switch it back on in 2 min

it solved mine

You will see those things if you start searching in All My Files, but if you just open it, it should just display the files.

When you select All My Files from the Go menu, do you see those search items?

Yes when I used to open it it did display the files but now it doesn't for some reason but just displays the search bar - could I have inadvertently done something? It displays the same when I do it from the Go menu. As I say it didn't used to open on a search bar with nothing below it but used to display the files.

If it helps, in 'Get Info' on the sidebar the path (I think that's what it's called anyway) is

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries

and in 'Get Info' in the search body it's

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocumen ts.cannedSearch

I don't know what the path would be if it looked like how it looked before and displayed all the files.

In my 'All My Files' folder on OS X 10.7.5, there is now just a search bar with 'This Mac' and 'All My Files' on it where all the files used to be. How do I get it back to showing the files? I don't know how it happened and I don't recall playing around with it.

I added my drive and waited a minute as you suggested. I went back in to remove it and it won't let me remove it. It give me Privacy List Error. The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error.

jlneece1 wrote:

I added my drive and waited a minute as you suggested. I went back in to remove it and it won't let me remove it. It give me Privacy List Error. The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error.

Try this command in Terminal. Copy and paste it into your Terminal window.

sudo mdutil -i on /

It will ask for your password. Type the password and hit return. You won't see anything on the screen when you type it.

It should respond with "Indexing enabled."

jlneece1 wrote:

Geez why does my Mac have to be the exception to everything? I got this response after entering password:Error: Index is already changing state. Please try again in a moment.

Restart

Thankyou!

This also helped me! my whole finder contents disappeared and all i could see were empty tags! Followed your instructions, added all my files to spotlight, and wa la! all there! THANK YOU!

Does anyone know why this happens in the first place?

In my All My Files folder on OS X 10.7.5, where they used to be there is now just a search bar with This Mac and All My Files on it. How do I get it back to showing the files?