Safe to disable ~/Library from Spotlight?

[johannnn]

When I go into System Preferences and try to disable ~/Library from Spotlight indexing, a popup says that this can make apps not work correctly.

The problem I have is that whenever I search something in Spotlight, stupid Office related files keep showing up near the top.
For example, now when I wanted to launch Outlook, one of the very first items in the Spotlight window was ~/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook%2015%20Profiles/Main%20Profile/Files/S0/1/EFMData/79.dat.

Will disabling ~/Library cause me not to search for emails in Outlook?

(I have the latest Office 365 app)

 

[chrfr]

When I go into System Preferences and try to disable ~/Library from Spotlight indexing, a popup says that this can make apps not work correctly.

The problem I have is that whenever I search something in Spotlight, stupid Office related files keep showing up near the top.
For example, now when I wanted to launch Outlook, one of the very first items in the Spotlight window was ~/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook%2015%20Profiles/Main%20Profile/Files/S0/1/EFMData/79.dat.

Will disabling ~/Library cause me not to search for emails in Outlook?

(I have the latest Office 365 app)

If you put ~/Library in the Spotlight exclusion list, you won’t be able to search anything that’s in your home folder at all. This would include being unable to search your Outlook mail.

 

[bogdanw]

one of the very first items in the Spotlight window was ~/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook%2015%20Profiles/Main%20Profile/Files/S0/1/EFMData/79.dat.

Have you tried to exclude Other from Spotlight search results?

 

[johannnn]

Have you tried to exclude Other from Spotlight search results?

Yep

Office is almost as bad as Adobe at putting random files all over the system -_-

 

[chrfr]

Yep

Office is almost as bad as Adobe at putting random files all over the system -_-

Office doesn't put files all over your disk. The apps are sandboxed and everything goes into ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office.

 

[bogdanw]

Office doesn't put files all over your disk. The apps are sandboxed and everything goes into ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office.

Besides the folder in Group Containers, there is also ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook. And containers are full of aliases, so files are all over
@johannnn Have you tried to exclude from Spotlight just the folder ~/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook%2015%20Profiles/Main%20Profile/Files ?

 

[Fishrrman]

I "disable" spotlight ENTIRELY.
It's safe.
It works.

 

[chrfr]

I "disable" spotlight ENTIRELY.
It's safe.
It works.

It also completely removes the ability to search for files on the computer. I'd argue that your method doesn't work.

 

[Fishrrman]

chrfr wrote:
"It also completely removes the ability to search for files on the computer. I'd argue that your method doesn't work."

I use two small free apps to do any searching:
- EasyFind
- Find any File
They seem to do the job.

I guess my dislike for spotlight dates back to the days of platter-based hard drives, which would thrash about enough without any indexing going on.
Also, I used these drives for audio recording, and didn't want any other disk activity going on that would interrupt such recording.
Even today, I see no need for such "indexes".
I don't need to search that often, and most of the time EasyFind does it very well.

 

[johannnn]

Besides the folder in Group Containers, there is also ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook. And containers are full of aliases, so files are all over
@johannnn Have you tried to exclude from Spotlight just the folder ~/Library/Group%20Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook%2015%20Profiles/Main%20Profile/Files ?

No not yet. But it's kind of annoying to add each folder separately, and then launch Outlook to test whether the search function still works...
Also, this doesn't sync to new machines, or even new users on the same machine.

This is a corporate Mac so I don't have any option. But never will I ever install Office on my personal Mac. I kind of like their iOS app, but no way do I approve apps that just ***** on my ~/Library folder...

Edit: added the folder to spotlight, did a search again, and now files from ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Microsoft/Office/OTele/ shows up on the top!