LKHill

Q: The "Search" facility in Finder doesn't find files I know are on my Mac.

I just typed "7-minute" into the Search bar on Finder for "All My Files" looking for a document I'd saved a few months back and the result came up with no documents. I looked in my Documents folder and there was the document I was looking for, "7-minute workout". This has been happening a lot lately. I've also noticed this same anomaly in Mail, where I will search for a keyword that I am absolutely sure is in a email, and it will come up blank, or only find recent examples and not old ones (I have all my emails back to 1999: disk is cheap.) I'm on Mac OS 10.8.5.

 

The only thing I can think of is that I had the 256 GB hard disk on my early 2008 20-inch iMac replaced with SSD recently (professionally, but not by Apple.) It runs much faster, but did I give it Alzheimer's in the process?

 

(btw, I'm a 35-year tech vet, including 3 years with Apple, so don't worry about being technical in a response.)

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), 4 GB RAM

Posted on Sep 29, 2013 8:26 AM

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Q: The "Search" facility in Finder doesn't find files I know are on my Mac.

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Linc Davis,Helpful

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Sep 29, 2013 9:16 AM in response to LKHill
    Level 10 (207,926 points)
    Applications
    Sep 29, 2013 9:16 AM in response to LKHill

    Rebuild the Spotlight index. If you try to search now from the magnifying-glass icon in the top right corner of the display, a pulsing dot will appear in the icon. When the dot disappears, the indexing is complete.

  • by LKHill,

    LKHill LKHill Sep 30, 2013 7:09 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Sep 30, 2013 7:09 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Good suggestion: the Finder Search is now more complete, but won't find files that start in numbers - as in "7-minute" - still misses them completely...

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Sep 30, 2013 10:36 PM in response to LKHill
    Level 10 (207,926 points)
    Applications
    Sep 30, 2013 10:36 PM in response to LKHill

    If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

     

    I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, they may not work as described.

      

    Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

    syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v 'boxd\|Norm' | tail | open -ef

      

    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).

     

    Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

     

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

     

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

     

    ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

     

    Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).

     

    The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

     

    A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

     

    If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

  • by mmrobertson12,

    mmrobertson12 mmrobertson12 Mar 25, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 25, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Having an identical problem, running Yosemite, and rebuilding the Spotlight index doesn't seem to do a thing.  No pulsing dot in the maginfying glass.  I'm not sure what that code in the second post is for, but it seems like if there's text in a word doc that the search function in the Finder should just find it.  Very strange.  I tested whether or not it mattered that the file was on the computer itself or on a remote drive (didn't), and whether the text in question was created with a keyboard or with voice-recognition software (didn't seem to).  If I search on "This Mac" all kinds of files show up in the search window for common search words -- so the search function seems to work in general.  It just has got huge and unexplainable blind spots.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Mar 26, 2015 8:34 AM in response to mmrobertson12
    Level 9 (69,813 points)
    iTunes
    Mar 26, 2015 8:34 AM in response to mmrobertson12

    See if you can find the file using this program. If you go Finder/View/Show Path Bar, it will show you where it is located.

     

    EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

  • by Baby Boomer (USofA),

    Baby Boomer (USofA) Baby Boomer (USofA) Mar 26, 2015 9:56 AM in response to mmrobertson12
    Level 9 (57,571 points)
    Mar 26, 2015 9:56 AM in response to mmrobertson12

    Find File for Mac is so much better & easier to use than Spotlight.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Wave Siggy.gif

  • by mmrobertson12,

    mmrobertson12 mmrobertson12 Mar 30, 2015 9:44 AM in response to Baby Boomer (USofA)
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2015 9:44 AM in response to Baby Boomer (USofA)

    Well, EasyFinder looks good, has good reviews, and is easy to use.  But it still didn't find a Word file which contained a phrase I was looking for.  I had selected "Search for File Contents" and all that... even directed it at the right folder where there were no more than 40 Word files.

     

    Not sure what's going on.  But thanks for the app recommendations.

  • by nickjn,

    nickjn nickjn May 17, 2016 6:10 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (12 points)
    May 17, 2016 6:10 AM in response to Linc Davis

    This worked for me with one modification.  Between adding the disk I want to exclude to the privacy tab and removing it, I closed and reopened System Preferences. I did not see the pulsing dot, but it did find the missing file and many more.