Searchlight fails to find files on my Mac

Good evening,

I am trying to find a file on my MAC (OS 10.14) using Searchlight. It seems to pull up hundreds of files which have no likely connection to the search phrase.

So to make sure I am doing it correctly, I open my documents folder and pick a file. I type the name with extension exactly as it shows in the Finder: Cost Estimates.xls. It comes back with no Excel files but it picks up two Word documents. For example, one was "What is due diligence.doc" I opened it in Word and of course both cost and estimates were in the text. But I want to find it in a file title.

Clicking "Show all in Finder" finally turned it up at the bottom of a long list of files under a category of "Other"

So are there any tricks to limit the search to get a smaller result set?

Thanks for any help. This is really frustrating.

Hugh

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 20, 2019 6:45 PM

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,138 points

Posted on Jul 21, 2019 1:45 PM

If you want to limit the search to a particular category, select the search token from the list that pops up when you type in the term.

It will attempt to show you all the possible limiting categories from which that term will match. You want, Name matches

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3 replies

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,138 points

Jul 21, 2019 1:45 PM in response to Hugh Piercy

If you want to limit the search to a particular category, select the search token from the list that pops up when you type in the term.

It will attempt to show you all the possible limiting categories from which that term will match. You want, Name matches

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,254 points

Jul 21, 2019 2:06 PM in response to Hugh Piercy

You need to accompany your search with operators that can steer your search results.

kind:excel AND name:cost

will find any Excel .xls/.xlsx document whose actual filename is, or contains, the word cost. On the otherhand,

cost Estimates.xls

will search all of your selected Spotlight Search Results categories for a match, including internal document text, and the result count could be staggering. When you have a filename, or a text string punctuated by space, you want to enclose the string in double quotes, so both parts are not searched independently:

name:"cost Estimates".xls

Lanny

Level 6

13,225 points

Jul 21, 2019 2:09 PM in response to Hugh Piercy

Do you mean, "Spotlight?"

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Searchlight fails to find files on my Mac