Problem: Some categories in Spotlight preferences are empty

Question

Jan-S Author

Level 1

0 points

Problem: Some categories in Spotlight preferences are empty

Hello,

I have a MacBook 13" from the mid of 2007 (2,16 GHz Intel Core2Duo, 3Gb RAM).

Currently Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63) runs on it.

I found a PROBLEM on the SPOTLIGHT PREFERENCE PANE:

In total I can see up to 15 categories, but only 5 of them are working like expected.

I can see the name and the icon of this 5 categories.

Those categories are

- Applications

- Systempreferences

- Documents

- Folders

- Messages & Chats.

All other categories do NOT have a name and an icon.

That means the categories are "empty" and I do not know what they mean.

I have alredy looked for similar problems in here. I although found some old ones,

but the answers in there did not solve my problem...

1) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3527634?start=0&tstart=0

2) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1890908?start=0&tstart=0

In addition to that, I already deleted the com.apple.spotlight* files in ~/Library/Preferences/.

But this did also not solve my problem... 😟

Do you have an idea how to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Mar 22, 2013 7:44 AM

Reply

Answer 1

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Mar 23, 2013 4:46 AM in response to Jan-S

Open up

 > System Preferences > Users & Groups

Create a new admin account. Log in to that account and see if the problem persists there, too.

If not, go back to the account with the problem, remove everything from login items at

 > System Preferences > Users & Groups | Login Items

Restart the mac and test.

If the problem exists in the test account and/or removing login items does not resolve the issue, backup your system, restart while aslo holding down 'Command' and 'R' keys and choose 'Reinstall OS X' from the dashboard.

Your own files should be left in place. The backup was just for precaution, but don't forget to do it in case the reinstall goes wrong.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan-S Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2013 11:28 AM in response to softwater

Hello softwater,

I have tested, what you wrote as first hint:

I have created a new admin created account and then checked the spotlight preference pane for this new user. The problem was also existing for the new user.

Then I thought about your second hint:

I have extracted the OS X Lion installation DMG from Lions installer, so I decided not to do a completely reinstalling, but install single applications using the *.pck files in DMG\Packages. After the installation of a package I checked if my problem was solved.

=> After the AdressBook.pck installation was done, the spotlight preference pane was working again! 🙂

Thanks for your support!

Reply