Spotlight Doesn't Index Microsoft Documents

You might try this application:

Maybe this will help:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4730577?answerId=21106648022#21106648022&ac_cid=tw123456#21106648

Similar problem here -- the contents of most of my Word files (.docx) aren't being indexed by Spotlight. My Word files (Office 2008) slowly started disappearing from Spotlight searches a couple of months ago; now very few of them show up at all -- it's really annoying. (EasyFind doesn't see them either!) Re-indexing is no help. My Excel (.xls) files are indexed, so this problem is a bit different.

Here's the really weird thing: If I open one of these "invisible to Spotlight" .docx files, and "save as" with a different name (either as .doc or .docx), Spotlight finds the copies. I can delete the original, rename the copy with the original name, and Spotlight now finds it. (Oddly, the new copy is about 5 kb smaller.)

The same pattern holds if I "show all in Finder" and search on the same term: the copies are found, while the original -- right there in the same folder -- is not found. It's as if there's some sort of date filter being applied.

I can't go doing this for the many hundreds of .docx files on my hard drive ... what the H*LL is going on here?

Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem?

In my case, deleting Microsoft Office.mdimporter, and replacing it with a fresh (newer?) copy, did the trick:

http://www.office.mvps.org/downloads/OFFICE08_mdimporter.zip

I've since upgraded to Mavericks, and everything still seems to be working OK.

That link gets you the mdimporter for Office 2008. You might be able to hunt down later versions on the mvps.org site.

OK thanks for the help. However, my Word documents are still not being indexed.

I downloaded Found from the App Store and it's not working either.

Any other options?

Upgraded to Yosemite . . . and the problem is back with a vengeance. No docx files at all are being found, unless the search term is in the file name.

Seems to be a rare problem, given how very few people seem to have it, but it has to have something to do with the way docx files are written - the EasyFind application can't find them either.

Well, the problem continues and it may be that many people do not know it exists. I just found out a few days ago myself when I was doing a search for a word that I knew was in a Word document -- but no results found. I tried reindexing, turning Spotlight off/on, adding the folder to privacy and then removing it-- and nothing worked-- EXCEPT to save that same Word document as an older version of Word. Now Spotlight finds it.

This is a big deal as by default Word saves as

Office Open XML word processing document

versus saving as

Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document.

The latter works with Spotlight content searching. Again, just as the OP says-- if you search for the file by filename, date, etc. Spotlight works but once you do a content search Spotlight fails.

HELP!

I would love to know how to fix this too. In the past I've been able to search the contents of .docx documents but with Yosemite I can't. Usually I open a finder window and enter the text I'm looking for in the search box. Nothing comes up now though I know it exists in .docx files on my computer. I'm using office 2011 on a mid 2012 MacBook Pro. Any assistance would be appreciated!

I started running into the same problem (Office 2011, OS X Yosemite, only Word files occasionally not showing). For now, it looks like saving as .doc (Word 97-2004) does the trick. Impractical but seems to work.

This is hard to believe! I just bought a new Macbook Air and thought the issue came from transferring Microsoft files from my previous mac. I just tested this and it is definitely an issue with the docx file extension. Hard to believe. I'll be sending feedback to Apple.

Same problem, spotlight suddenly started not indexing Microsoft word documents, especially .docx. Only way to make it work is to save in .doc. Anybody got it solved? Vital for my job!! I am using Yosemite. Thanks

Same problem... did anyone find a solution?