Search in finder not working.....again

[tomf]

Hi,

When i type a word into the search box in finder, nothing is coming up, even though i know i have files with the word im searching.

I did. spotlight re-index, done it several times, one time it wokred but now its back to nothing.

any ideas how to fix this?

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

EasyFind:

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

It's free.
It's small.
And... it works.

 

[auxbuss]

When i type a word into the search box in finder, nothing is coming up, even though i know i have files with the word im searching.

Does Spotlight itself find whatever you're searching for?

You can also try

mdfind <text>

on the command line.

 

[tomf]

ive since re indexed again, restarted the mac and it seems ok now. i will try spotlight itself next time it happens.

Wy does this keep happening btw? Its happened a few times in the last few weeks. One was when i upgraded to big sur, sucks but i kinda get that. But this last time i have no idea

 

[tomf]

Ok - problem is back again -

Searched in finder search bar for a perticular folder, it doesnt show up at all, tried spotlight search from the menu bar, same thing, doesn't show up.

When searching with spotlight, there is an indexing bar at about 80% and it doesnt seem to move from that.

The folder im searching for is on a seperate internal drive. Its definatly there, but like i say, when i search for it it doesnt show up.

In the finder window If i click on the folder/drive that its in and search, it doesnt show up, same if i click 'this mac'

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Ok - problem is back again"

...and again, I'm going to make the recommendation I made above in reply 2 (which you didn't try):
Try "EasyFind" instead.

 

[tomf]

Id rather fix the original problem, thanks

 

[auxbuss]

You can check the indexing status of a drive using `mdutil -s /Volumes/volume_name/`

To swicth indexing on use `mdutil -i on /Volumes/volume_name/` (probably needs sudo).

 

[DeltaMac]

I would try removing your external drive from the Spotlight pref pane/Privacy tab window.
Just click on your drive in that Privacy window, then click the (-) in the bottom left corner.
Then, close the pref pane. Re-open and re-add that external drive.
You may want to do that for each drive that appears in your Privacy window.
You should also do that with your system boot drive, too.
After closing that pane, re-open and add your drive(s).
This should be the same as the terminal command to reset the spotlight database, but it gives you some selective control over which drives that you want to have spotlight search.
Doing it this way (through the pref pane) might even fix your issue. Remember that it can take a bit of time to re-index the drive(s), with several drives, it can take several hours. And, starting a search with the Spotlight search window will show you the progress bar.
Finally, I would suggest that if this process fixes, but does not stay "fixed", that you could consider booting to your Big Sur bootable installer, and reinstall the system.

 

[tomf]

ok thanks for the above, will look into it