Pages document not searchable. But, an index.pages document that was created from original is.

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Pages document not searchable. But, an index.pages document that was created from original is.

Puzzled! When searching my mac for a document using text I know is in the document, certain documents only show up as index.pages documents. When I search for the actual name of the document it is there and the text is in the document. When I go to change the name of the index.pages document it says it is currently in the original name of the document. I know this sounds confusing, but, if you know what I'm talking about, could you give me some insight into why this is happening. I use iCloud. I have a feeling it may have something to do with that.

Posted on Sep 11, 2018 12:42 PM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

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Oct 10, 2018 12:13 PM in response to dannymercer

Neither on High Sierra, nor Mojave, do searches that match content within Pages documents reveal the index.html file inside the main Pages document (which is shown). The exceptions are if the Pages file, or its Package folder were not actually recognized as Pages documents by the Finder — because they were damaged, or the internal index.xml[.gz] file was extracted separately from the Pages '06/'08/'09 documents.

I have tested this on macOS High Sierra, and Mojave, and cannot reproduce your results showing the index.xml file without it residing outside of a Pages document.

Your search strings are unreasonably long. Reduce to just the unique text that will match.

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

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Sep 11, 2018 4:17 PM in response to dannymercer

I/we do not recommend rummaging around inside of Pages '06/'08/'09 documents, whether package folders, or the single-file format documents to get at the internal index.xml.gz/index.xml respective XML documents. The Pages v5 thru v7.1 documents are an entirely different document architecture that contain binary data, and are unreadable.

Yes, the index.xml files are specialized text and searchable, but the majority of the content is XML document formatting instructions surrounding the plain text of your document. If you are not careful, you can trash the Pages document. If you want to poke inside that index.xml file, copy it to your Desktop — don't rename it inside the Pages container.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

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Sep 11, 2018 7:45 PM in response to dannymercer

There is no index.pages document created by any Pages application — unless you specifically save a document with that name. The Finder search cannot see inside zip files, which it would have to do to discover text internal to Pages '09 or older documents.

I don't know if you are using Spotlight or not, but if you are, and have the Spotlight Results category documents selected, then you search for specific text within a Pages document:

kind:pages "some white-space string"

and all Pages documents except occurrences of index.pages:

kind:pages name:.pages -(name:index)

and all Pages documents except occurrences of index.pages, and except the string "stranger"

kind:pages name:.pages -(name:index) -("stranger")

I normally do not use long quoted strings in a search, just 1 - 3 unique words that are most likely to get a hit. I don't use filenames with spaces in them, and primarily use icon view, rather than any of the other views.

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Answer 4

dannymercer Author

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Sep 11, 2018 7:06 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’ll try to clarify my question. When I do a search in finder for a document that I know has a certain phrase in it, the only doc that shows up is index.pages. There are dozens of these. When I open the index.pages doc, it is the document I’m looking for. The original document doesn’t show up by searching for the exact phrase by putting it in quote marks. At the top of the document where the file name is, I click it and it shows that it is in the original document. When I search in finder for the file name it then shows up in finder. I’m wondering why it is doing this with certain docs. I’ll post pics of what I mean.

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Answer 5

dannymercer Author

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Sep 11, 2018 7:27 PM in response to VikingOSX

Here are two screenshots. One shows where I searched for the phrase: "Constantinople became the central capital, politically, religiously, economically" You can see where the index file showed up. At the bottom where the file path is it shows you where the original document is and what the name is. When I then search just for the name, the document shows up. Is there anyway I can fix this so that when I search the phrase, the original document shows up?

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Answer 6

dannymercer Author

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Sep 15, 2018 4:47 PM in response to dannymercer

Throwing this back out there. Basically, when I search for a document I don’t know the name of by using a phrase in quotes that I know is in the document, there are some that pull up as index.pages doc. When I open it, it’s the document. At the top of the document where the name is, in this case, “index,” the drop down arrow shows its in the document with the name. See images in previous post. If I search by the document name, it shows up. Anyone know why this happens and if it can be fixed? There are dozens and dozens of these. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with iCloud.

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Answer 7

dannymercer Author

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Oct 10, 2018 8:23 AM in response to dannymercer

Hello. I'm still looking for an answer to this. Again, when I search for the filename the doc shows up in finder. If I don't know the name but search for text that I know is in the document it shows up with the name index.pages. When I look at the info of the document it shows a file location path of the filename>index.pages. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Danny

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Answer 8

dannymercer Author

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Oct 10, 2018 12:21 PM in response to VikingOSX

Take a look at my screenshots above. When I searched text that is in the document, you can see where the index.pages file shows up. When I search the filename, the document name shows up. Here is a screenshot of the top of the index.pages document where the name is and the dropdown to see location. You can see when the index.pages file is open it shows that its location is the original filename. I'm not sure what you mean by index.html file. These are all index.pages files.

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Answer 9

dannymercer Author

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Oct 10, 2018 12:45 PM in response to VikingOSX

I haven't named them anything but the file name that it shows. Somehow these 160 pages documents are names index.pages and show they are contained in the original filename. Sorry, but I'm not an expert here, so most of what you are saying is as good as speaking German to me. 🙂 I just want to figure out how I can get rid of the index.pages filename and get it back to the original name.

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Answer 10

VikingOSX

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Oct 10, 2018 12:38 PM in response to dannymercer

As Pages '06/'08/'09 documents also have an internal index.xml, you can appreciate that I never name Pages documents index.xml as it is confusing based on the document history. So, you are deliberately naming new Pages documents as index.pages.

I did state index.html, but meant index.xml.

When you work on an initially saved Pages document, it will get indexed by Spotlight, and that filename reference will remain in the Spotlight cache until you rename the file. Once the file is renamed, so is its Spotlight cache item, and searches of the same string that worked before will not be found in the old filename via Spotlight — only in the new filename.

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Pages document not searchable. But, an index.pages document that was created from original is.

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