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pete · May 4, 2005, 07:03 AM

I just wanted to test something so I created a document with some text, saved it and put it my documents folder. When I search for one of the words in the document nothing comes up. When I search for the document name it appears. Spotlight seems to have finished indexing so that shouldn't be an issue. How long does it take for it to index new stuff? Is there a difference between when and how it indexes file names vs. metadata?

What could be going on?

Thanks

pete · May 4, 2005, 07:09 AM

Follow up. I tried re-writing the document in TextEdit and then it will work. But not in Mellel, word or Pages.

Person Man · May 4, 2005, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by pete

Follow up. I tried re-writing the document in TextEdit and then it will work. But not in Mellel, word or Pages.

Spotlight will not index the content of documents it doesn't know about. There need to be plugins written for it to be able to do that with Mellel or word. I thought Apple would have a Pages plugin by now...

pete · May 4, 2005, 08:06 AM

Interestingly, I tried it with a word document and it worked too. And MS Word
hasn't been updated as far as I know.

andreadeca · May 4, 2005, 08:40 AM

yeah, but word is a de-facto standard so i would expect it to be indexed by default.

try recreating your indexes: remove your drive from spotlight indexing (using the PRIVACY tab in the spotlight settings in system preferences) and then re-add it: spotlight will reindex your drive (will take a while): maybe this time it will see the data.

andrea

OptimusG4 · May 4, 2005, 09:23 AM

Originally Posted by Person Man

Spotlight will not index the content of documents it doesn't know about. There need to be plugins written for it to be able to do that with Mellel or word. I thought Apple would have a Pages plugin by now...

To be honest, I just did a search for key words in my resume that I made in Pages, and it showed up as the top hit, with Word and TextEdit following (I have it in all 3 for testing).

pete · May 4, 2005, 01:14 PM

I will try to reindex for the third time, but isn't there a serious problem if this happens frequently. I shouldn't have to do anything and I've already reindexed twice. I'm pretty savvy with a mac - just imagine all those users who have no clue at all...

I also wonder WHY it is not indexing new data? there has to be a reason. Or at least a bug?

Anyway, I'll try reindexing now and see what happens.

themexican · May 4, 2005, 01:34 PM

if you look on the spotlight pages at apple it has alist of standard filetypes indexed by spotlight. you can also download new plugins

Lancer409 · May 5, 2005, 01:23 AM

is there a way to have spotlight re index your entire harddrive?

adam1185 · May 5, 2005, 01:36 AM

Originally Posted by Person Man

Spotlight will not index the content of documents it doesn't know about. There need to be plugins written for it to be able to do that with Mellel or word. I thought Apple would have a Pages plugin by now...

There is some sort of pages plugin in Tiger I believe. I saw it in Library/Spotlight or somewhere like that.

andreadeca · May 5, 2005, 03:05 AM

Originally Posted by Lancer409

is there a way to have spotlight re index your entire harddrive?

Yes.

FIRST:
Go to "System Preferences" -> "Spotlight" -> "Privacy" and ADD your hard drive to the privacy list. This means that Spotlight will not index your drive anymore and, furthermore, it will remove all indexes it made of that drive.

THEN:
Simply remove your hard drive from the "Privacy" list, and spotlight will re-index it.

I strongly suggest you to log-out and re-login on your system between the two operations.
just to be sure I would go as far as rebooting the system (I KNOW I KNOW this is not Windows, but better safe than sorry...)

Hope it helps.

ANdrea