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(Tiger) Spotlight Troubles

E

ebteksystems2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2004
7
0
Hey,

So my Spotlight seems to have missed many files while indexing my external FW drives. The only way that I have found to get them in the index, is to literally open each file up.

Is there anyway to "reindex" my computer or drive from scratch? Im guessing this is going to be an issue many people are going to have in the future. Thanks.

benp
 
Yup, I saw this same issue, it seemed to miss everything on my 2nd partition and I found no way to force a re-index...had to open every program for it to find them.
 
I am having problems with Tiger not finding any images tagged with keywords or comments that were applied by iPhoto '05. Very weird.
 
That's interesting... maybe an error occurred while it was indexing and it just messed up. I'm surprised that there isn't any way to reindex manually in the spotlight preferences or in the drive 'get info' window.
 
diehlr said:
I am having problems with Tiger not finding any images tagged with keywords or comments that were applied by iPhoto '05. Very weird.
Click to expand...

I think that was sort of expected, although I'm very disappointed it doesn't work. iPhoto's keywords are stored in the iPhoto index, not the individual images, and thats where spotlight looks. I'm hoping there's a fix coming soon. I'd hate to think we'd have to wait until iPhoto 6 (or a third party app) for this type of thing. All iPhoto needs is a way to copy keywords over into EXIF info, which shouldn't be too hard to do.
 
Is it the design of spotlight that you aren't able to search through libraries. Before when I wanted to delete an app, I would search the name in the finder and also find all of the support files and prefs in the libraries, and delete those too. Now when I search I do not get any library results. It's probably not going to be a big deal at all, but I like to keep my computer really organized and, if this is the case, I don't like it when the OS deliberately limits what I can do. I guess spotlight would probably run slower if the libraries were included: can anyone confirm this?
 
supergod said:
Is it the design of spotlight that you aren't able to search through libraries. Before when I wanted to delete an app, I would search the name in the finder and also find all of the support files and prefs in the libraries, and delete those too. Now when I search I do not get any library results. It's probably not going to be a big deal at all, but I like to keep my computer really organized and, if this is the case, I don't like it when the OS deliberately limits what I can do. I guess spotlight would probably run slower if the libraries were included: can anyone confirm this?
Click to expand...

I know you can add and exclude folders from Spotlight. Look in System Preferences. I imagine the default is just to search through your Home folder (and Applications), because thats where 90% of the people need to look anyway. Not too many people dig around and remove stuff from the Libraries.
 
Perhaps by excluding folders (partitions and external drives) and then including them will fix the indexing issue with them too. It would be like reindexing. Only 6 more days before I can try it.
 
You don't choose "where" you search (other than making folders private). You determine what type of file you look for: image, folder, movie... etc. Even though I have file and folder selected, no results come from the library. What I'm trying to say is, there is no way to choose to get results from the library. They seem to not want you messing with it like back in the old OSXs.
 
supergod said:
You don't choose "where" you search (other than making folders private). You determine what type of file you look for: image, folder, movie... etc. Even though I have file and folder selected, no results come from the library. What I'm trying to say is, there is no way to choose to get results from the library. They seem to not want you messing with it like back in the old OSXs.
Click to expand...

So you mean you can exclude folders from being searched by Spotlight but you can't include any by choice? I could see a situation where you would want to exclude a folder with many sub-folders from being searched but want to add one folder inside to be searched. So that'd mean you'd have to go through and tell Spotlight all the many folders you didn't want to search.

Have you tried pointing the finder to the library and and use the search field there to search the selected folder (being the Library)?
 
One store shipped a few copies early.......thats all..... LOTS of people seem to be installing it now. ;) ;)
 
Thanks for all the replies, but if you don't actually know the answer please keep assumptions and speculation for another thread.

System Prefs. only allows you to change the ordering of results in Spotlight i.e. Apps, PDFs, etc. There is nothing that allows for removing or adding of locations in the index. That is not to say you cant make custom searches from specific places by doing a Cmnd+F when on a drive/folder.

The problem is Spotlight has (accidently?) left out many files from its index and will not find them, unless the files are opened or edited. I am not talking about any file type in particular i.e. Movies, MP3s, Pdfs, etc. are all missing.

Spotlight will find all files on a drive if its indexed correctly. For instance, Spotlight doesn't automatically search the System folder. If you do a Cmnd+F on it, Spotlight will find all files in it.

So lets try and keep this pertaining to reindexing Spotlight to add missing files/folders. Thanks.
 
ebteksystems2 said:
So lets try and keep this pertaining to reindexing Spotlight to add missing files/folders. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Is there anything in the Tiger help files about it? Can you go into the Terminal prompt and physically see any thing that might be an index file for a volume? You might be able to google seach or do a man page on it if you have the technical name of the index.
 
BornAgain Knows His Tiger!

On the root of each volume there is a file ".Spotlight-V100".

Remove this file from the offending volume. Then eject and mount the volume and Spotlight will Reindex the entire drive.

Problem solved. Thanks BornAgainMac.

benp
 
I'm using find (command - f) at the desktop, and I've included the ability to search for visible and invisible items — HOWEVER

I can't find ".Spotlight-V100"


how do I find it, so I can delete it?

thnx.
 
JamSoft said:
I'm using find (command - f) at the desktop, and I've included the ability to search for visible and invisible items — HOWEVER

I can't find ".Spotlight-V100"


how do I find it, so I can delete it?

thnx.
Click to expand...

Try this.

cd /Volumes/<Your Drive Name>
ls -la
or
find ".Spotlight-V100"
 
i'm having this problem as well but it's missing alot of stuff in my home folder, lots of my photos..etc that sort of thing, is there a way to do a force index on a folder or something?
 
You should be able to remove the .Spotlight-V100 file from the root of any volume, including your main one. That would mean removing /.Spotlight-V100. Remember that this file is actually a directory, so you will have to sudo rm -rf it.

As far as what it does and does not index...it is my experience so far that it does NOT index system files, nor does it index anything considered 'hidden' by the BSD subsystem (e.g. .name files). I'm sure there will be plugins created for Spotlight to do exactly this, but IMHO its not Apple's job to welcome every user to the files they need to screw up their computer.
 
sparkleytone said:
You should be able to remove the .Spotlight-V100 file from the root of any volume, including your main one. That would mean removing /.Spotlight-V100. Remember that this file is actually a directory, so you will have to sudo rm -rf it.
Click to expand...
...or for those fearing the rm command, just use Terminal to open a finder window: open /.Spotlight-V100 and then delete the contents by dragging it to thrash (or marking it and press cmd-backspace) and empty trash... :)
 
this is still proving to be trouble, i'm doing all that's said but the spotlight file thing isn't even showing up in terminal or the finder.
 
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