You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

search on words in comments field does not work anymore

Hey everybody! I know there have been more people with my problem, but the solutions i found so far do not work.


I keep many files (pictures, movies etc) on external disks and i made use of the 'comments' field in the info box (command-i) so that i could look for desciptions of images and such. It always worked very well until today. I tried to drag a disk image into the preferences of spotlight (and take it out again after 10 minutes) and i did the trick in terminal. But it does not work anymore. I have 1000s of files handled this way so it would be really useful if i could search on the descriptions, seperated by kommas, as i have always done.


Is there anyone with a solution to this problem?

Thank you!


iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Apr 22, 2022 11:00 AM

Reply

Similar questions

4 replies

Apr 22, 2022 11:21 AM in response to martin draax

Still working here but cannot test in11.6


If still not working...


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.


Manually Rebuilding Spotlight via Terminal

If the aforementioned Spotlight control panel approach doesn’t spur a reindexation of the drive, you may need to initiate it manually through the command line. Open Terminal and use the following command string to do so:


sudo mdutil -E /

This basically asks for temporary super user status, which is why Terminal may ask you for your password (it may not if you’ve used a sudo command recently or are already logged in as a super user or root. The command asks the unix tool mdutil to reindex the spotlight database for everything on the computer, including external drives, mounted disk images, etc. To re-index only for a specific drive, use the /Volumes path. For example, for an external drive named “MiniMe,” the command would look like this:


sudo mdutil -i on /


Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.


If still need be…


Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time


/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user


sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network


killall Dock


sudo mdutil -E /


sudo mdutil -i on /


Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

search on words in comments field does not work anymore

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.