[obmij5]

i tag things in the spotlight 'comments' box. i tag things in punakea. never show up in either my smart folders nor my spotlight searches. any ideas??

thanks a lot guys.

[rehoot]

That doesn't sound right. Perhaps the folders are not indexed and Spotlight is just taking a long time to respond. You could try to manually index a folder by selecting the folder in Finder, then hitting Command i for info, and clicking the button to index.

I don't use Spotlight, but here are some tips on it:
http://www.macworld.com/2005/07/secr...ctor/index.php

[MPMoriarty]

If you feel comfortable using the command line, launch Terminal and run the following command...

sudo mdutil -E /

This will delete your current Spotlight index and force it to rebuild itself. Perhaps something is corrupted in your current index that is preventing file comments from being searched.

[reader50]

Originally Posted by rehoot 

... You could try to manually index a folder by selecting the folder in Finder, then hitting Command i for info, and clicking the button to index.
...

What button is that? You may have installed a 3rd party extension to add that - it sounds useful.

[rehoot]

Originally Posted by reader50 

What button is that? You may have installed a 3rd party extension to add that - it sounds useful.

Oops... the index button in the "Info" window in Finder is available in 10.3.9 but not 10.4. (I was using my G4 at the time).

In 10.4, the only way that I know how to index a particular folder is with the mdimport Terminal command, but I think that creates a one-time snapshot of the folder hierarchy. If you search that folder a month later, you might need to rerun the mdimport command for that folder again. Remember that you would need to do this only if the folder is not part of the default set of folders that Spotlight searches.

[obmij5]

hey thanks guys. i'll try these. i really appreciate all the help i get from macnn forums.

[obmij5]

hmm i tried the terminal one. I believe it worked, however it did not help my problem. Spotlight indexes my files and i can search fine unless i'm trying to find something through its comments. Then it won't respond...For example if i have a video file titled "Episode 4" and i search episode, it will come up, but if i have it tagged "chicken" and search chicken, it won't come up.

strange.

any other ideas?

[rehoot]

Originally Posted by obmij5 

hmm i tried the terminal one. I believe it worked, however it did not help my problem. Spotlight indexes my files and i can search fine unless i'm trying to find something through its comments. Then it won't respond...For example if i have a video file titled "Episode 4" and i search episode, it will come up, but if i have it tagged "chicken" and search chicken, it won't come up.

strange.

any other ideas?

It sounds like there is an old copy of the index files and it is not refreshing when you change the tag to "chicken." Also experiment with files in your home directory to be sure that it is not a problem with that one folder not being indexed. There could be many different settings that could cause this, including a corrupt file in /.Spotlight-V100. If you are willing to take the time to rebuild your index (maybe 10 minutes, maybe 3 hours??) then you could delete the /.Spotlight-V100 folder and then reactivate indexing.

First disable Spotlight index on that volume (from a Terminal window):

mdutil -i off /Volumes/TheNameOfYourVolume

Now delete the directory:

cd /
sudo rm -R .Spotlight-V100

Now reactivate indexing:
mdutil -i on /Volumes/TheNameOfYourVolume

The reindexing could take a long time depending on how many files you have and what type of files they are.

[obmij5]

YOU FIXED IT. YOU'RE THE MAN.

thanks a lot. macnn forums strike again.