Q: Yosemite: Spotlight. How do I search for Word (doc, docx) files?

See System Preferences > Spotlight

do you have Documents checked?

It should find any documents including Word Excel etc. you have created.

Hi ..

Open System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results

Make sure Documents is selected.

Then click the Spotlight icon top right corner of your screen.

You may also need to go to Finder > Preferences > Advanced then make a selection from the:  When performing a serach pop up menu.

You can narrow down the search also. Click a clear space on your desktop then click Help from the menu bar top of your screen.

Type:  Spotlight   in the search field then click:  Narrow down your search results

Hi.

On OSX Mountain Lion it's possible to find the specifics extension of file using the "KIND" criteri.

Here are the documentation:

OS X Mountain Lion: Narrow down Spotlight search results

and here hare the sample:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/01/06/improve-your-spotlight-searches-with-search-opera tors/

In Yosemite there is still that possibility?

Thank's

I have followed these instructions to the letter and Spotlight still cannot find search text within MS Word .docx files. This is unbelievable!

Your spotlight index may be bad.

Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support

I can confirm this problem: Spotlight sees the content of .doc, .pdf and other document types, but does not see the content of .docx. Sometimes it does, however, but most of the time it does not. Has nothing to do with index. Seems to be a bug.

VERY disappointing!

I have already tried clearing the Spotlight index and then waiting until Spotlight re-indexes the entire drive. It doesn't seem to have made any difference.

I have many instances of original document versions in MS Word format (.docx), where the file is accompanied by a PDF version I can circulate to clients. In most cases, a Spotlight search will produce only the PDF version. In some instances, Spotlight fails to detect both the DOCX and the PDF versions.

More and more often I find myself turning to DevonTech's EasyFind, or Houdah's Tembo.

It's a shame, because Spotlight is useful for so many things. But it seems to really be failing here. I wish I could figure out just what it is that prevent Spotlight from effectively searching the contents of these documents.

You can specify the following sequence in Spotlight to find a Word .docx document containing the word Primaries. The second example will find the string "Every non-essential item" in the same document.

Primaries kind:Office XML

"Every non-essential item" kind:Office XML

This example searches for the word Primaries in all Word documents (.docx, .doc, .dot, .dotx) while excluding any search in dictionary files.

Primaries AND (kind:Office XML OR kind:Word) -.dic

Sorry, this is not working. Spotlight is currently unable to see the content of .docx documents (Mac OS 10.10.4).

Apenia wrote:

 

I can confirm this problem: Spotlight sees the content of .doc, .pdf and other document types, but does not see the content of .docx. Sometimes it does, however, but most of the time it does not. Has nothing to do with index. Seems to be a bug.

 

VERY disappointing!

It has to be something in your index. My Spotlight searches .doc, docx without a hitch.

This is what I thought at first. But I rebuilt the index and it is still not working. Spotlight finds .doc, .pdf and others, but does not find the content of .docx.

Try deleting the index with this command in Terminal while logged into an admin account.

sudo mdutil -E /

That will delete the index altogether and force it to recreate from scratch. I don't actually know whether Apple's method actually deletes the whole index, or just cleans and writes over the database. If it doesn't delete the whole thing, this may help.

There could be a problems with the Word importer schemas, or it may be getting stuck. Check the Console logs for mdworker, mds, and spotlight to see if there are any errors relating to indexing Word files.