Cure for Microsoft Office files not showing in Spotlight
Tue, Oct 20 2009 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: wscody
Tue, Oct 20 2009 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: wscody
Some time ago, after installing a Microsoft Office 2008 service pack update, I noticed that many of my Excel documents were no longer indexed as part of the Spotlight database; Spotlight search results for obviously-known content was coming up empty.
I traced the problem to the fact that I still had Microsoft Office 2004 installed (because I need macro capability), and the old PowerPC version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter was sitting in my ~/Library/Spotlight folder. Many mdworker console messages were indicating that only a PowerPC importer plug-in was found, thus many Office documents weren't getting indexed. This was happening even though I also have the Intel version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter in my system-level Library.
The solution was to trash the PowerPC version of this file, and trash the /.Spotlight-V100 file, which forced a total re-indexing. The system then used the Intel version of the Spotlight importer, and all my Office documents are once again indexed.
I traced the problem to the fact that I still had Microsoft Office 2004 installed (because I need macro capability), and the old PowerPC version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter was sitting in my ~/Library/Spotlight folder. Many mdworker console messages were indicating that only a PowerPC importer plug-in was found, thus many Office documents weren't getting indexed. This was happening even though I also have the Intel version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter in my system-level Library.
The solution was to trash the PowerPC version of this file, and trash the /.Spotlight-V100 file, which forced a total re-indexing. The system then used the Intel version of the Spotlight importer, and all my Office documents are once again indexed.
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