mountain lion finder search scroll bug

I have this same issue, except i can replicate it all the time in ~/Library/Preferences. I'll be in column view and be scrolling down looking for a file and it will jump back to the last selected file. It has been happening on both my MacBook Pro (17inch, 2009) and my iMac (27inch, 2009) both running 10.8.4. It has been occuring since 10.8.3.

The only fix I've found is to be patient. Obviously the computer is calculating something. When it has done so, scrolling works fine. If you wait a minute, it should sort itself out, even in a list of a couple of thousand.

Your suggestion gave me the clue as to what was happening on my mac.

Why was it taking so long, then, to finish what should have been quick searches?

The answer was Microsoft office, and especially outlook from Microsoft 365 (aka 2011).

see my solution below, and thanks.

It appears that on my mac book pro, on which I use Microsoft Office with Outlook (not entourage) spotlight is taking an inordinate amount of time to do searches becasue it searches all my "messages and chats".

The solution has been not quite as simple as you might think.

If you open system preferences and then go to spotlight you can choose which types of file to use for your searches. deselecting "messages & chats" only really affects Apple mail.

However, deselcting this plus "apllications" (and in my case I decided to deselect "contacts" and "events & reminders" as well as "fonts") seems to do the trick.

I also tried using the 'privacy' tab for the 'documents-microsoft user data' folder that office insists on putting there.

Up to now my searches using spotlight have been much faster, and the scrolling problem seems to have vanished because of that.

I found a suggestion that moving the microsoft user data folder into your home library preferences folder might work but others suggest it does not (http://imdanny.com/blog/technology/go-away-microsoft-remove-annoying-microsoft-u ser-data-folder/).

I hope this helps someone.

I have a similar issue, but it's not with spotlight. I find that if I have one window open (no files selected), I'll scroll down to the bottom. From another window, I'll move a file over to the first one. As soon as I drag the file over the first window will automatically scroll to the very top. Then I decide to select the file I just copied over to the first window (this actually happens with any selected files), so that it's hightlighted. The file will be closer to the bottom of the window. I'll then scroll to the middle of the window, and repeat the same process with another file copied over to the first window from the second. Except this time, instead of scrolling to the top automatically, it will scroll automatically to the hightlighted file. I can select a file all the way at the bottom, and without fail whenever I copy a file over to that window, it will always scroll to the highlighted file were I am in that window.

This only started happening when I upgraded to Mountain Lion. I also find that Mountain Lion on my Mac Pro is pretty laggy. Not bad, but annoying enough. I can see/feel the difference in speed between my previous 10.6.8 and 10.8.5. I thought 10.8 was suppose to be peppy. I don't even want to take as stap at Mavericks. I only switched from 10.6 to 10.8 because many apps were requiring Lion and up. And 10.7 from what I use at work, and from opinions of other Mac users, is pretty crap. So there was no point in upgrading to that. Is there a setting for this, or is this truly a bug in the OS?

You helped me ghun1 ! I have this anoying Finder behavior in ML. I followed your instructions, but the problem just really solved when I uncheck and checked again the option 'Date created" in the right click menu of the Finder bar. The bizzare behavior of the scroll bar desapeared.

Thank you very much!!!!