How to make High Sierra find tags created with Sierra?

Question

How to make High Sierra find tags created with Sierra?

Under Sierra I used colour tags to mark files I wanted to access quickly. After upgrading to High Sierra, Finder is only finding some of those files. Most do not show up when I click one of the colour tags that are listed at the bottom of a Finder Window sidebar.

I have tried asking Siri - it gives the same results as I see when selecting a sidebar tag.

The only way to make the old Sierra tags findable seems to be to locate files by hand, delete the tag, then re-create it. Surely that wasn't intended?

Does anyone know how to make High Sierra find these files? Would it help to force Spotlight to re-index my files, and if so how would I do that?

I have not seen any other discussion/ question reporting this issue - is it just me? Thanks in advance if anyone can help.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), macOS Sierra (10.12.1)

Posted on Jan 6, 2018 9:17 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 6, 2018 12:17 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you - this was helpful. I didn't know about the search formats you describe, and the pointers to preferences are also helpful. However they didn't actually solve the problem.

In my question I had almost solved my own problem: re-indexing has done the trick. I found out how to do this from the Apple Support page How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support.

Everything now behaves as it used to under Sierra.

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Answer 2

Jan 6, 2018 12:11 PM in response to RobertDHarding

In the Finder window search area, or in the Spotlight window:

tag:"My red-colored tag"

tag:blue

kMDItemUserTags:green

tag:red AND tag:blue

You can use any of these formats to find the specific tagged files in the current directory location, or on This Mac. Note the example where a file may have red and blue tags assigned to it. I never use the tags listing in the Finder side panel.

It is recommended that in Finder Preferences, that you have the following set:

General
New Finder windows show: your user name with the house icon
Advanced
When performing a search: Search the Current Folder

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