Apparent Spotlight fail

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Apparent Spotlight fail

Hello Folks,

I use Spotlight frequently and when trying to do that today I couldn't find something in my iMac. As I considered what was happening weird I made a test. I copied the name of one file and pasted it on Spotlight and Spotlight returned with "No results". I did it with another file and the same: "No results".

I restarted the iMac, but no changes. Note that I store all my files on 3 different places: Macintosh HD, an external HD and in iCloud Drive, but Spotlight found nothing - See attachments

I would appreciate any suggestion, hint or guidance

Thanks Paulo

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 9, 2019 6:44 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 10, 2019 12:18 PM in response to pmonnerat

Spotlight requires the use of certain keywords to narrow your search results. Just specifying a file name causes Spotlight to check every category selected in its preferences for a text string representing that filename. Slow, or no results. Instead, you might have tried the following:

kind:image +.jpg AND name:PMV

name:.xlsx AND name:"brazilian reports"

Find all .jpg whose name contains PMV. Find all Excel .xlsx whose name contains "brazilian reports." I almost never rebuild my Spotlight index, and have no issues with finding what I seek with the right combination of keywords.

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