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Spotlight is not giving me Results Properly?

M

marcusalwayswins

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Hi Guys,

II’m trying to understand this. I have a document called “Care Insurance” saved in my Documents Folder in Finder. When I search Spotlight for “care” or “Insurance” it doesn’t show the document. Why isn’t it searching? However, when I search in my documents section separately in Finder it does. Why is that? Why doesn’t Spotlight directly show the results? I’ve tried searching in the Files as well and the results are the same.
 
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You mention Finder. Do you mean the Files app, or are you talking about macOS?

In any case Spotlight appears to be working for me; it’s finding files and searching file contents for matches, along with email and Safari bookmarks. 🤷‍♂️
 
It’s always something said:
You mention Finder. Do you mean the Files app, or are you talking about macOS?

In any case Spotlight appears to be working for me; it’s finding files and searching file contents for matches, along with email and Safari bookmarks. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...

I know the difference between finder and files app when has Files app started appearing on MacOS ?

If it is finding for you great !! Are we talking about issue I am facing. Or what is working for you ?
 
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marcusalwayswins said:
I know the difference between finder and files app when has Files app started appearing on MacOS ?

If it is finding for you great !! Are we talking about issue I am facing. Or what is working for you ?
Click to expand...
Your OP mentions Finder twice. Hence my uncertainty.

On iPadOS 26.2 Spotlight is finding files by the name I search for. Although upon further examination it’s not finding *all* possible matches, it is finding the most recent file, which suggests that Spotlight indexing is working fine for me.
 
I had a particular numbers document which I regularly open via spotlight, and it would repeatedly disappear from the results. The only solution was to create a new document, copy the contents over, and delete the old one.

Do other files show up? Are you waiting a suitably long amount of time? Did you restart? Did you add the documents folder to the spotlight privacy settings? IF you didn't, do so, restart, then remove it. This should force Spotlight to reindex the documents folder. If that still doesn't work then consider erasing the spotlight index, rebooting, and letting it create fresh index.
 
wish I could just replace Spotlight with Finder in menu bar because it's gone beyond useless, especially for images - all the stupid 'add any number to contacts' prompts, all the stupid Firefox shortcuts, all the stupid 'PDF documents', 'documents', 'spreadsheets' and 'other' so-called categories in settings, and yes, again, all the stupid image thumbnails - and I'm not even on OS Vaseline Soup.
 
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!!! said:
I had a particular numbers document which I regularly open via spotlight, and it would repeatedly disappear from the results. The only solution was to create a new document, copy the contents over, and delete the old one.

Do other files show up? Are you waiting a suitably long amount of time? Did you restart? Did you add the documents folder to the spotlight privacy settings? IF you didn't, do so, restart, then remove it. This should force Spotlight to reindex the documents folder. If that still doesn't work then consider erasing the spotlight index, rebooting, and letting it create fresh index.
Click to expand...

Ok I have enabled Files and Folders in Spotlight Settings yet it is not finding it. I have also restarted the Computer. I dont remember correctly but from whatever I remember the Documents Folder is something that I created and added it to the Finder Side Bar. I dont know sure but maybe I created and added it. Does that make any difference ? is that why Spotlight is not finding it? Since it is not created by the System?
 
This has fixed broken search in Outlook and broken Search in Finder after Migrating to a new Mac for me:

forums.macrumors.com

Finder can't find anything

This has also fixed broken search in Outlook or broken Search in Finder after Migrating to a new Mac: Open Finder and go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal and type the following commands (Press Enter after typing each command). Note: When prompted for a password, please type the Mac user...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
genexx said:
This has fixed broken search in Outlook and broken Search in Finder after Migrating to a new Mac for me:

forums.macrumors.com

Finder can't find anything

This has also fixed broken search in Outlook or broken Search in Finder after Migrating to a new Mac: Open Finder and go to Applications - Utilities - Terminal and type the following commands (Press Enter after typing each command). Note: When prompted for a password, please type the Mac user...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

is this also applicable for spotlight not finding a file? When I search for the same document or file finder finds it correctly ?
 
marcusalwayswins said:
Ok I have enabled Files and Folders in Spotlight Settings yet it is not finding it. I have also restarted the Computer. I dont remember correctly but from whatever I remember the Documents Folder is something that I created and added it to the Finder Side Bar. I dont know sure but maybe I created and added it. Does that make any difference ? is that why Spotlight is not finding it? Since it is not created by the System?
Click to expand...

Do you mean to say the Files & Folders wasn't previously enabled? If not, I guess that's the reason why.

If that's not the case, you'll have to explain your document folder situation more. Is it not the default Documents folder created in your home folder? Is it on an external drive? You'll need to provide more information.
 
!!! said:
Do you mean to say the Files & Folders wasn't previously enabled? If not, I guess that's the reason why.

If that's not the case, you'll have to explain your document folder situation more. Is it not the default Documents folder created in your home folder? Is it on an external drive? You'll need to provide more information.
Click to expand...

Files and Folder was enabled previously also still it do not fetch the document.

it is on my Home Folder in Finder under Documents Folder so the path is Home Folder>Documents>Care Insurance.

I also reset the Spotlight Indexing from Terminal. Still it is not giving me the document.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
Files and Folder was enabled previously also still it do not fetch the document.

it is on my Home Folder in Finder under Documents Folder so the path is Home Folder>Documents>Care Insurance.

I also reset the Spotlight Indexing from Terminal. Still it is not giving me the document.
Click to expand...
Did you try my previous steps? Add the Documents folder to Spotlight privacy, restart, remove Documents folder from privacy and wait a while?
How did you reset spotlight indexing via terminal? The only way that really works is the good old sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100 and immediately restarting. Using mdutil still leaves old config files and doesn't restart the processes. After doing that though, you have to wait a while for it to reindex.
 
Files and Folders were already enabled in Spotlight in Settings.

What do you mean by Spotlight Privacy ? Where is that ?

I used this command to reset Spotlight Indexing

sudo mdutil -E /System/Volumes/Data

I have not restarted the Mac.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
is this also applicable for spotlight not finding a file? When I search for the same document or file finder finds it correctly ?
Click to expand...
If i remember correct, my Spotlight was working, but not my Finder and Outlook Search.
But i do not use Spotlight because the Finder search can also find words in documents which is very useful for coding an i use it a lot.....

This is in the end the base for any Search on MacOS.
And keep in mind that i have used this while on Ventura 2022.
 
I use grep for words in a file, and find for file names. I've never used spotlight, I just learned what it is designed to do
 
I’m on M3 pro, Sequoia 15.7.5, Numbers 14.5 and I am having the same issue.
Looking for a .numbers file named Expenses 2026.numbers.
In spotlight typing:
- expenses 2026 > nothing
- expenses 2026 numbers > nothing
- expenses 2026 .numbers > nothing
What does show up is "expenses 2025.numbers".

Following the previously mentioned advice to use the Finder search:
(New window, upper right corner search field)
- expenses (file names containing) > expenses 2025, 2024 etc show up.
- expenses (file names containing) .numbers (kind: Numbers spreadsheet) > equal as above: expenses 2025, 2024 etc

I created a new Numbers file, named Expenses 2028.
I repeated the above, same none results.
What is happening?
Is this a Sequioa thing? Did you experience it before upgrading to MacOS Tahoe 26?
Regarding the fact that this thread is a 26 OS thread, it doesn’t give me much confidence.
What might be good to know:
I migrated from an older macbookpro with the older version of iWorks, Pages 9 i think it was. Now I use 14.5, and no need to upgrade Pages to the actual version (with paid functionalities).
But the older Expenses files, created in the old Pages, are indeed findable. My newly created spreadsheets are not.
Any newly created Numbers file is not showing up in Spotlight.

I just tried a newly created Pages file, saved it on the desktop. The same happens, not findable.
TextEdit file, Excel, nothing.

So much AI and now Spotlight not working...
I will look for a way to rebuild Spotlight indexation. My HD is 1TB, 80gb left free.
I hope that someone can shed a light on this. TIA.
 
never tried spotlight, but I use control f to do file searches. I have had similar problems with control f searches so I suspect an underlying issue in Darwin or maybe the BSD Unix underlying Darwin. should be fun solving the problem
 
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