spotlight not searching word documents

Spotlight is no longer searching Word documents (.doc and .docx). For a while it seemed to search some Word documents, but no longer finds anything. I have a large number of documents in .rtf format which I have set to open in Nisus Writer Pro, and spotlight searches those fine. Any ideas what would fix this -- it's a major problem as I am an author and am trying to reference my notes and earlier writings for a book. I am using El Capitan, but have had this problem before. Any ideas what might work? In the past someone said a Microsoft file of some sort needed to be put somewhere, but I can't find that.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Apr 19, 2018 5:54 AM

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Apr 19, 2018 6:39 AM in response to fiberhome

I have stumbled upon something interesting while doing some further research. Start your spotlight entry with "kind:" and specify the type of document, and it will find the string of characters you want in that type of document. So If I search with "kind:word elephant" it will come up with word documents (both .doc and .docx) containing "elephant". You can also search on "kind:doc" and for unknown reasons it will come up with .doc, .docx, pdf, and plain text documents containing "elephant." Search for "kind:docx" and it won't find anything. Search for "kind:rtf elephant" and it comes up with rtf files containing "elephant." Just enter "elephant" (without the "kind:") and spotlight comes up only with files with "elephant" in the name, but that's just the top hits; searching on a less common word turned up files that did not have it in their name. I can't tell if this is a temporary fix, or is something that will really solve the problem. It's definitely not what I would have expected to have to do to find words in files.

Apr 19, 2018 7:10 AM in response to fiberhome

Recheck your Spotlight Search Results categories in System Preferences, and ensure Documents, and Other categories remain selected.


Use any of the following Spotlight searches, whether in Spotlight, or in a normally launched Finder Window's search field:


kind:word +.doc

kind:word +.doc name:xyz

kind:word +.doc "Monty Python"


The first query locates all .doc/x documents, without the clutter of templates and macros. The second adds the ability to ask for the explicit filename, or characters (e.g. xyz) known to be in that filename. The third looks for the string "Monty Python" in word .doc/x documents. You can add the name: operator as in the second example to the third example too.


If in Spotlight, you can press the command key to see the path to the file, press return to open it, or press command+R to open a Finder window with the document icon selected.

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spotlight not searching word documents

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