Where is full path in find window?

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Level 1

9 points

Where is full path in find window?

When finding a file from the finder window I used to be able to see the full path information at the bottom of the Finder window, but now it just shows the filename. If I navigate to a folder manually (not by using find), it shows the full path. Selecting Get Info of any file in the find window also fails to show the full path. There also used to be an "open containing folder" option from the right-click menu in the find window. That is also missing. I am trying delete a file in a specific parent directory, but it's no longer possible.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.2)

Posted on Dec 10, 2017 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,518 points

Dec 10, 2017 2:54 PM in response to czechpistol

Perhaps your spotlight index is corrupt. Mine shows the path. If you can't even show the enclosing folder, my guess is it doesn't know where it is, which may be corruption in the index.

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

czechpistol Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:02 PM in response to Barney-15E

That's a good idea. I rebuilt the index on that drive and am getting the same results. What is interesting is that I cannot open any of the files that the Finder finds. It tells me that the alias cannot be opened because the original cannot be found. This problem does not appear to happen when searching the local drive. It only happens when searching a SMB share.

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Answer 3

czechpistol Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:10 PM in response to Kappy

It's at the bottom of the window like yours. You can see it in the screenshot of my original post. I did try enabling AFP on my NAS and connecting over AFP instead of SMB and the problem doesn't happen there. Is there a problem with the SMB implementation on the Mac?

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:27 PM in response to czechpistol

I don't know other than that SMB, Samba, is not the native file sharing of Macs. Apple decided to use it because it worked better with non-Apple servers and computers. But I have no idea how good the implementation is. So you may be right in assuming it is the result of using SMB. Do you see the same thing when just searching results from your own local drive as in my image?

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Answer 5

czechpistol Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:53 PM in response to Kappy

Local drive search works fine. I had switched to SMB after reading that AFP is no longer Apple's primary file sharing protocol, but it seems it doesn't use Samba either. Any idea what the preferred protocol is?

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:04 PM in response to czechpistol

It's working on my system.

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Answer 7

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:06 PM in response to czechpistol

I don't think Spotlight indexes a network share. What happens if you try a real file instead of an alias?

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Answer 8

czechpistol Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:08 PM in response to Kappy

They aren't aliases which makes that error even more unusual although I wasn't sure if Spotlight creates temporary aliases to the files that it finds.

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Answer 9

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Dec 10, 2017 7:29 PM in response to czechpistol

Nowadays Apple leans toward SMB because of its compatibility with most of the rest of the world networks. AFP only works reliably with other Macs that are running the same version of macOS.

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