Spotlight indexing and .mdimporter files

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Spotlight indexing and .mdimporter files

I did a clean install of MacOS 10.9.1 on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011), 2 GHz Intel Core i7, 4GB RAM. A day after restoring old user files and apps (using Migration Assistant) I was testing the Spotlight indexing and noticed that a large number of files in the Documents folder were not getting indexed. I then noticed that Spotlight was only about 1/20th finished indexing the drive and indicated "6 days" to complete the indexing. I did several rounds of stopping the indexing, deleting the index, and restarting the index and the situation never changed.

I then came across this article:

https://medium.com/computer-says-no/6f22422bbd59

which suggested that bad? files in the /Library/Spotlight folder might be the cause. Here is what was in that folder:

Finale.mdimporter

GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter

iBooksAuthor.mdimporter

iMovie.mdimporter

iWeb.mdimporter

iWork.mdimporter

LogicPro.mdimporter

Microsoft Office.mdimporter

I deleted all of the above files, rebooted and then restarted the Spotlight indexing. This dramatically changed the speed at which the new index was created - it did so in under two hours. However, I am now concerned that Spotlight may fail to index documents created by Finale, iWork, Microsoft Office, etc. or that it may impede Time Machine's ability to do a proper backup of the drive (since TM uses the Spotlight index).

Does anyone know if my concerns are valid?

Does anyone know how these .mdimporter files work?

If I restore one of the .mdimporter files back to its original folder, and restart, will Spotlight now include those files in its indexing?

Posted on Jan 26, 2014 10:49 PM

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Answer 1

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bakkumd

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Mar 14, 2015 1:43 PM in response to thedatadude

I realize I am replying to a post over a year old - but there is still much web talk about this goofy file from the Finale install package.

After a lot of testing and looking at items in Console, I determined the bad file in my Spotlight re-indexing routine was the Finale.mdimporter.

Based on dozens of posts in other forums, you can delete this file with no ill effects to running Finale. I did just that, then restarted. The Spotlight re-indexing finished within about five minutes.

Give it a try...

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