[Dave N]

Spotlight used to search inside my excel files, but now it does not. It searches inside just about every other kind of document though, including Word. I recently did a wipe/reinstall of my hd, so I'm guessing that something went bad there. Does anyone have a fix?

iMac G5, 10.4.11

Thanks,
Dave

[ibook_steve]

Which version of Office are you using and are you updated to the latest? I seem to recall this being added in one of the many Office 2008 updates.

Steve

[steve626]

I just did an experiment with two files, one being an Excel 2004 file and one being an Excel 2008 file. I have both versions of Excel on my computer. Spotlight searched for and found a character string inside each of the two files successfully. It works on both types of files.

You can re-index your spotlight if yours is not finding everything it should.

[Dave N]

I'm using Office 2004.

I'll try re-indexing...thanks

[Dave N]

I re-indexed twice, but it still won't search inside Excel files. I know it did this before, so I'm open to other suggestions.

[slugslugslug]

Right, you're using Office 2004, but you haven't mentioned whether you applied any of the subsequent updates. Office 2004 was released almost a year before Tiger, which introduced Spotlight. So if you reinstalled Office from DVD after wiping your HD, it's possible you're using a version that predates whatever minor update introduced Spotlight compatibility. Run Microsoft AutoUpdate (I forget where it is in relation to your Office/Applications folders, but you can find it with Spotlight ), let it install whatever it finds, then try your search again.

P.S. I just noticed that the latest Office 2004 update (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968695) requires that some of the prior ones be installed. So you may want to re-run AutoUpdate after it finishes to see if it finds anything newer. Lather rinse repeat until it tells you you're completely up to date.

[Dave N]

Thanks for the suggestions. I ran the Office updater several times when I reinstalled office. I just checked and there are no new updates. Maybe I'll try reinstalling Office...

Also, like I said above -- Spotlight searches inside Word files fine. Strange...

[PatrickH]

I had the same problem with Excel 2004, even though I had applied the most recent updates. Spotlight was searching in recent files, but not older files.

I then opened the old files and resaved them. Each time, Excel asked if I wanted to save the file in the new format. After saving them, Spotlight searched the files properly.

(And yes, this was a time-consuming hassle. I couldn't think of a faster way to get Spotlight working on those old files.)

[QSilver]

An entry over at MacOSXhints.com may have what you're looking for:

Cure for Microsoft Office files not showing in Spotlight

[Dave N]

I appreciate everyone's help, but unfortunately none of the above suggestions worked for me.

I finally solved the problem by replacing the "Microsoft Office.mdimporter" file in the Library/Spotlight directory. I downloaded the file from here:
Downloads

After replacing the file, I forced a complete re-index of the hard drive by: go to the Spotlight system preference pane, click the Privacy tab, add the entire hard drive to the privacy list, wait 5 min, remove the hard drive from the privacy list. This will initiate a re-index.

Anyway, that's what worked for me (and believe me, I tried a lot of things!). Hopefully anyone else having the same problem will find this information helpful.

[Gregg]

Why not just use Find within Excel?