searching/spotlight not finding most files

[shecky]

this is weird, but when i search in the finder or in the spotlight menubar leopard does not find a lot of stuff that it should (and that it had in tiger)

for example, i wanted to delete Adium. in the past i would just search for "adium" in tiger and it would show all the plist files, the application support folders, everything. all leopard shows is the application itself and nothing else. i tried altering the folders to be sure it was looking at my whole machine and it was. indexing finished a week ago. what i am noticing is that it appears to only find stuff in the folder if you are at that folder in your search (so up in the top of the search window it lists "application support" or whatever; then it finds the adium folder just fine) whereas if i am out further up the folder tree it does not find them, almost like its not looking in nested folders or something.

any ideas?

 

[DoFoT9]

are u sure that some folders havent been included in the spotlight system preferences???

 

[shecky]

this is what i have for them

 

[DoFoT9]

this is what i have for them

anythiing under privacy??

 

[shecky]

anythiing under privacy??

nope.

this is wierd???

 

[xUKHCx]

nope.

this is wierd???

System files are exclude from Spotlight results. To get them to show up you have to do it in the finder. Then Click the "+" Then in the first box select other. Then type in that search box "System" and select "system files" and to save time in future, check the "In menu" checkbox. Then it takes you back to the finder window. Then change the second box to "include"

Thanks apple for this very useful feature that apparently you put into Leopard

Search System Files
Use Spotlight to search system files.

 

[shecky]

thanks.

that is just.... wow. bad move on apple's part.

 

[xUKHCx]

thanks.

that is just.... wow. bad move on apple's part.

Indeed especially considering they are touting it is a feature in Leopard, when it was already present in Tiger and in a more useful form.

Also it is just a limitation in the GUI side of things because "mdfind" does not limit the results.