i've tried control / shift / period, but that's not it.
If i search for something, each search result shows shows the file AND an alias to that file.
double clicking it just gives an error message.
how can i switch this off/ fix it please so it doesn't show this alias
here's a search for "tomato". the top two results are the file, and an alias to it...?!
?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
you've gone off on a tangent... this is not about 'not resolving an alias that's on an external hard drive'... (a) NONE of these aliases work and (b) i don't want to find aliases when i search for a document.
Spotlight preferences don't have an option to not find aliases.
And when you say its been like this for years, my mac has been showing aliases in search results for a couple of months.
Never before.
Provided you are asking Spotlight to index PDF documents and images, you can use the search field in a Finder window, or Spotlight itself to ignore alias files:
kind:pdf name:tomato
Will only find PDF documents that have the case-insensitive string "tomato" within the filename.
ok, thanks - i understand better now,
but it has raised two more questions i'm afraid!! ..
thanks for your help
Paul
actually, that doesn't seem to work..?
i typed in to the search box, palenque -(alias) and got the following results. the three items with icons are the music file, found on my hard drive and backups on two external drives. the white files are more aliases, which, if double clicked bring up that "alis can't be opened" message mentioned previously.. ???
I don't understand that answer sorry. I'm searching the same way i've always searched. I'm typing 'tomato' (or whatever), in the search field in the top right corner of a finder window.
I've never used the Spotlight function - don't see the point of it when there has always been a search field in the top right corner of a finder window... though i understand that they are the same thing. (so why they both exist is still baffling.)
However.. I'm not asking spotlight to index anything. I'm just doing a search like i've always done, and its throwing up loads of useless answers, when it didn't used to do that..
The search field in a Finder window depends on Spotlight indexing to do the job, which is why entering the word tomato has such a wide-ranging result including alias files. That is why I narrowed the search result to just PDF documents whose name contains tomato.
This will also suppress alias files but return anything that has tomato in the name, or within a document content:
tomato -(alias)
Spotlight indexing provided it is turned on, and indexing the startup drive, has been this way for years, and is not just a new development.
I don't believe there is any Spotlight category in System Preferences -> Spotlight panel > search results that if disabled, will conceal alias files, without interfering with normal file searches. Review the previous link that I provided.
Did you have Spotlight reindex your drive?
This looks like an issue with Spotlight, and nothing to do with aliases.
Go to System Preferences->Spotlight, click Privacy and drag your drive to the list.
Quit System Preferences, then go back and remove the drive from the list.
Give it a bit of time to reindex.
A Finder alias file contains a link to the original document location when that alias was first created. Moving the original file and alias from the Mac to an external drive does not update the path contents in the alias file. That is why when you double-click on an alias, if it cannot resolve the original path to its associated file, then it fails.
I have two aliases on my Desktop for two different PDF documents. I can suppress those alias files using the following syntax:
kind:PDF AND (name:tb OR name:ulv) -(alias)
so I am uncertain why the alias suppression did not work for your palenque example.
Paul Richards4 wrote:
you've gone off on a tangent... this is not about 'not resolving an alias that's on an external hard drive'... (a) NONE of these aliases work and (b) i don't want to find aliases when i search for a document.
Spotlight preferences don't have an option to not find aliases.
Well VikingOSX has just showed that it DOES have such an option.
But your original problem has nothing to do with alias, as I wrote before.
You have a corrupted Spotlight index, and by reindexing it should be fixed.
and it did!
thank you.
no, he told me it does, but he didn't show me anything. I opened Spotlight preferences and I don't see the word Alias...
searches in the finder are showing aliases