Comment from Mike
Time: March 2, 2007, 12:50 pm

I have the problem that spotlight is simply not searching, and is not finding anything. It was working up until a couple of days ago, I cannot isolate what I have done differently. Possibly I installed a firmware update, would this cause the problem? I already rebuilt the index once and I am rebuilding it again.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Mike

Comment from Mike
Time: March 2, 2007, 12:59 pm

Never mind…It seems that trying various combinations of these methods fixed the problem. Thanks
Mike

Comment from J
Time: March 6, 2007, 9:45 pm

At work, I use Windows Desktop Search (WDS) constantly. I can’t imagine working without it. However, since I’ve purchased my MacBook Pro I’ve had continuous problems with Spotlight so shy away from it. It constantly hangs or freezes or cannot find what I’m looking for. I’ve never had a problem with WDS (or had to rebuild it). No offense to anyone but I wish my experience with Spotlight was as good or even better than WDS. Thanks for the tip as I will probably have to use it alot for Spotlight to work decently.

Comment from J
Time: March 15, 2007, 11:23 am

Actually, I’ll have to retract that last comment I left. I found out what was bugging my Spotlight through one of these methods above (not sure which one), and I agree: nothing can touch this function. Spotlight is amazing! My entire Mac is working better. I’m wondering if it was a corrupted font, because I got lost in repairing and ended up running some font software that found a bunch of bad fonts.

So anyway, yeah. Spotlight works better than WDS after all. Go figure.

Comment from sam
Time: March 15, 2007, 4:53 pm

hey there, i tried EVERYTHING, spotlight still wont work…

Comment from seafrog
Time: March 19, 2007, 4:52 pm

SystemUIServer did not work for me but changing the display resolution helped.

Thanks for the information post.

Comment from Jakob
Time: May 20, 2007, 2:59 am

Thank you so muck for the tip. Solution #1 did it for me!

Comment from miso
Time: June 30, 2007, 5:04 pm

i’ve try all 5 and still it does not work, I’m actually getting fed you with apple, for every good thing that I discover there is another one thats annoying. Why wouldn’t the damn thing just work.

Comment from Lonn
Time: July 28, 2007, 1:04 pm

Thanks, I have trying to fix this for weeks with out success. No. 1 did it! thanks
Lonn

Comment from James
Time: August 7, 2007, 11:43 am

Only #3 worked for me. So strange!

Comment from Jason
Time: August 24, 2007, 10:11 am

just wanted to say thanks - the 1st option worked first time.

Pingback from iLaptop.mobi » Open Question: MAC - spolight function not working - any ideas?
Time: August 24, 2007, 6:51 pm

[…] http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/15/spotlight-wont-work-fix-a-broken-spotlight-menu-with-these-troubleshooting-tips/ […]

Comment from Fred
Time: September 7, 2007, 2:34 pm

My 3 year old did something to the home computer and Spotlight has been dead ever since. #1 worked immediately! THANK YOU!

Comment from Michael
Time: September 29, 2007, 6:57 am

Yeah….you are right. Spotlight is the most important feature in a Mac.I LOVE Macs

Comment from WowThanks
Time: November 27, 2007, 1:35 pm

WOW

this worked instantly, thanks so much

Comment from guest
Time: November 30, 2007, 7:52 am

spotlight (i.e. the magnifying glass) has vanished from my menu bar a while ago. sofar nothing has helped to get that little loupe back into the menu bar.
neither have i found a simple way of reinstalling spotlight (since i wouldn’t want to reinstall os x upt to 10.4.11 all over again).
tx in advance for any suggestions!

Pingback from yeago works » Blog Archive » Easy Fix For OS X Spotlight / Finder Problems
Time: December 1, 2007, 12:31 pm

[…] This page suggests rebuilding it with the following command: sudo mdutil -E / […]

Comment from Yeago
Time: December 1, 2007, 12:34 pm

Thanks for these tips, however, they weren’t able to solve my problem. I just opted for turning off indexing in OS X. See:

http://yeago.net/works/easy-fix-for-os-x-spotlight-finder-problems

Comment from HMCIV
Time: December 6, 2007, 3:34 pm

Also if you Spotlight magnifying glass fails to appear in the upper right hand corner of your mac, try repairing your permissions via Disk Utility.

If you installed something recently (especially that isn’t yet leopard compatible), that may be the culprit.

Comment from ejv
Time: December 13, 2007, 5:50 pm

Well, I run Leopard on a new powerbook and Spotlight does not work at all. I have tried all the suggestions above, but the only files Spotlight returns are Entourage files. Which is totally useless for me. In 10.4, Spotlight seemed to work much better. It’s really frustrating to not be able to find anything now.

Comment from Rory
Time: December 30, 2007, 5:15 am

Solution 1 fixed the problem that I had in seconds. Thank you

Comment from lil c
Time: December 30, 2007, 10:57 pm

my spotlight still wont work
just bought the laptop
when i click on anything like itunes, and all the programs on the menu
it says my spotlight is installed incorrectly
when i try reinstalling with my mac disk it says the same thing. no matter what i do it says mt spotlight is corrupted

Comment from printerguy
Time: January 7, 2008, 7:49 am

on my IMAC 2ghz, 1gig ram, last years model, I can’t get spotlight to work yet.
I’ve reinstalled Leopard 2 times, last time complete clean install, still don’t work.
I’ve done all the above tries still don’t work. Even used macpilot, that didn’t work.
I can’t find another thing to try on the internet, exhausted all efforts.
HELP!!!!!
I updated my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.33 ghz, everything worked great.

Comment from printerguy
Time: January 7, 2008, 7:49 am

on my IMAC 2ghz, 1gig ram, last years model, I can’t get spotlight to work yet.
I’ve reinstalled Leopard 2 times, last time complete clean install, still don’t work.
I’ve done all the above tries still don’t work. Even used macpilot, that didn’t work.
I can’t find another thing to try on the internet, exhausted all efforts.
HELP!!!!!
I updated my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.33 ghz, everything worked great.

Comment from Amber
Time: January 10, 2008, 1:15 pm

I followed solution 2 but the sudo command didn’t rebuild the index it “turned searching and indexing off” and i have no idea how to turn it back on again.

Comment from Marwan from Damascus
Time: January 28, 2008, 10:01 am

Thanks for the tips! Solution #1 solved the problem–
I wish the apple website were as efficient as osxdaily.com

Comment from ken
Time: March 7, 2008, 4:39 pm

I have a fresh install of 10.5, and Spotlight has never worked, though it worked fine on 10.4. mdutil showed that indexing/searching is “disabled” for my hard disk. After poking around in the control panel, I discovered that in the “Privacy” tab, it has “Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations: Mac HD”.

I guess that’s the new default in 10.5. Weird. You’d think it would at least say that in the Spotlight menu. After it’s enabled, the Spotlight menu does say that it’s busy indexing, and even shows a little progress bar.

Comment from Patrick Kinsella
Time: April 1, 2008, 6:52 pm

These great hints won’t work if Spotlight is completely disabled (which some people have tried and don’t know how to reverse).

If all else fails, follow this procedure:

Make hidden files visible (copy and paste the next line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES

Now in (previously hidden) /etc folder in your root/hard drive, find hostconfig, and open it with any text editor.
Does it include this line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
(note the two dashes astride YES)?
If not, type this line at the bottom. Save the file as hostconfig in your root folder (etc folder won’t accept it from a text editor). Now drag and drop this new hostconfig to /etc. This requires your admin password to replace the existing hostconfig.
Reboot, and your spotlight is working. This may be a long way around, but it worked for me.
Now make invisibles invisible again with this line in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO

To fire up Spotlight, you may need to type this into Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on /
(the slash is important)

If Mail is still not searching inside Entire Message, type this into Terminal to index your old messages:
sudo mdimport /users/YOURNAME/library/mail [or whatever the path to your mailbox message folders.

Took me hours to piece this together from various forums, so I hope the next person who breaks Spotlight can find it fast.

Patrick

Comment from Patrick Kinsella
Time: April 1, 2008, 6:52 pm

These great hints won’t work if Spotlight is completely disabled (which some people have tried and don’t know how to reverse).

If all else fails, follow this procedure:

Make hidden files visible (copy and paste the next line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES

Now in (previously hidden) /etc folder in your root/hard drive, find hostconfig, and open it with any text editor.
Does it include this line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
(note the two dashes astride YES)?
If not, type this line at the bottom. Save the file as hostconfig in your root folder (etc folder won’t accept it from a text editor). Now drag and drop this new hostconfig to /etc. This requires your admin password to replace the existing hostconfig.
Reboot, and your spotlight is working. This may be a long way around, but it worked for me.
Now make invisibles invisible again with this line in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO

To fire up Spotlight, you may need to type this into Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on /
(the slash is important)

If Mail is still not searching inside Entire Message, type this into Terminal to index your old messages:
sudo mdimport /users/YOURNAME/library/mail [or whatever the path to your mailbox message folders.

Took me hours to piece this together from various forums, so I hope the next person who breaks Spotlight can find it fast.

Patrick

Comment from Patrick Kinsella
Time: April 1, 2008, 7:03 pm

Sorry: you need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).

Enjoy.

Patrick

Comment from Patrick Kinsella
Time: April 1, 2008, 7:03 pm

Sorry: you need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).

Enjoy.

Patrick

Comment from t
Time: April 5, 2008, 10:19 am

Spotlight is not indexing the text INSIDE my .ppt files (for Office 08). It is only indexing the filename.

I run Tiger, 10.4.11, Intel (core 2 duo) MBP.

It also would not index with Office 04… but I just learned that it indexes for other people and not me.

So I put the main HD in privacy not to index and then took it out again.

The blue thing came up after restart… it said it was going to take 2+ hours, but then it ended in like 30 minutes.

However, not everything was indexed. I’ve been checking activity monitor and mdimporter is working (not very quickly) but slowly in the background and appears to ever so slowly be indexing files.

14+ hours later, it is still not done indexing, and the .ppt that are currently showing up in spotlight searches are only searchable by the file name.

Any insight you have would be great.

Comment from Anon
Time: April 6, 2008, 1:55 pm

the resetting of the screen resolution worked for me! thanks

Comment from Allison
Time: May 21, 2008, 8:39 pm

Wow, great suggestions! MainMenu helped a lot. However, I still have this problem: When I search for a file that I know is on my system (as a test), it never shows up when I search the whole Mac - only when I am searching in sub-directories closer to the file’s location. I’ve made sure the Privacy setting is not excluding “Mac HD” and have tried everything else on this forum. I feel like I must be missing some very basic thing, because Spotlight is working “in the details” - it’s just this BIG thing that’s not right. Help!

Comment from Big Tex
Time: June 19, 2008, 2:22 pm

I used technique number 3, but I get the message: Error, no index found for this volume.

NOW what?