Leopard Spotlight Misses Many documents

[passaickidmac]

I have had a terrible time with Leopard. Think twice before installing it if you haven't so far.

My Leopard update/ install apparently was corrupted and after hours on the phone with Apple, I was told to back to take the iMac the store for Apple Geniuses to perform a Hard drive erase and Clean install. They did and things got a bit better , but...

Then the wireless network began to drop out---the fan icon going grey and error messages saying my connection 'failed' of 'timed out' or the password was wrong..., but thanks to this forum I found the solution...which solution even Apple 2nd Tier support didn't know this one) the problem was the now "hidden Interference Robustness" option was turned on. Oncce turned off, all is fine..

My latest issue is that Spotlight is 'spotty' at best in finding files, both .doc and ocr'd files from PDF's simply aren't located. This is a major problem as I need it to find scanned and ocr'd documents.

What should I do to remedy this?

For others with this issue, what solutions if any have worked.

Many Thanks in advance...

PS: I have minimal programing skills and don't know how to use Terminal.

 

[mad jew]

Try reindexing Spotlight. Either paste the following into Terminal:

sudo mdutil -E

Or add and then remove your hard drive to the privacy tab in Spotlight's Preferences. It'll take a little while to reindex.

 

[passaickidmac]

Re-Indexing Worked---What Happened When I did it

I used the non-terminal method to re-index Spotlight. For a newbie trying it out, here are some aspects of my experience:

1. Drag the the Mac Hard drive folder off the desk top into the area in the Spotlight - Preference- Privacy.

2. Leave the image of the file there 10-15 minutes

3. Highlight the disk name and image and press the (-) sign at the bottom to remove it.

4. While indexing ( which only appeared to start only after I restarted the machine) a small 'beating' dot appeared in the middle of the Spotlight Magnifying glass portion of the Spotlight icon at the upper right I assume signifying the index is on-going.

Good luck and thanks.

 

[mad jew]

Good work mate. You don't have to wait 10-15 minutes but rather just close System Preferences and then reopen it to remove the hard drive from the Privacy pane.