Search inside documents with spotlight

searchspotlight

For years I had used spotlight to search inside of plain text files and other documents. As of late, Spotlight no longer searches inside documents it appears to only search their titles. Is there any easy fix to this? I'm running mojave (10.14)

Best Answer

An easy fix is to use EasyFind to look for and inside files. Easyfind is quick and versatile. You can select the type of files to look in if you want or just scan them all. Not as quick as Spotlight but more settings to control where you look. The app is free.

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MacOS – Desktop Search – with more features than Spotlight

I don't know of a third party solution, but I do know that Spotlight can do all of those things, except for #6, but that's more of a function of Word than Spotlight.

Why is Automator not working with Spotlight Search

What happens if you try in terminal.app (change /Search/Directory/ to yours):

mdfind -onlyin /Search/Directory/ kMDItemFSName == "\"NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl\""

Or in applescript editor.

    set searchPath to "/Search/Directory/"

    set this_item to "/Users/USERNAME/Desktop/NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl"

    set theFileName to "\\\"" & (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) & "\\\"" as string

--set theFileName to quoted form of (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) as string

  set theOrigFilePath to paragraphs of (do shell script "mdfind -onlyin " & searchPath & " kMDItemFSName == \"" & theFileName & "\"")

Best Answer

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MacOS – Desktop Search – with more features than Spotlight

Why is Automator not working with Spotlight Search

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