Spotlight in Monterey Not Finding Files with Spaces in Names

gnirkatto

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Nov 4, 2017
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Anyone else here who found that spotlight search in Monterey 12.0.1 no longer finds certain files (tested with xlsx, docx, pdf) that have space(s) in their names?

Files w/o spaces in their names can be found properly. Also, jpegs seem to work regardless of their names.

This worked well before the upgrade. it's pretty disastrous, my whole workflow depends on finding all files quickly via Spotlight. And I have MANY with spaces.
 

Just_Me_D

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I haven’t noticed, but I’ll do some tests later today and then follow up in this thread.
 

Trees

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Maybe searching with quotes around the file name would be a workaround? For example, "file name" rather than file name. The support article below provides some context. I do appreciate that the article is referencing searching via the command line. It is strange that Spotlight searches before Monterey 12.0.1 worked for you without having to escape the space in the file name.

https://support.apple.com/guide/ter...e02-3ec8-48f1-951f-866e52955fc8/2.12/mac/11.0
 

gnirkatto

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Resolved.
I rebuilt the index according to a link that I received in an Apple support forum:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

It took about 45 minutes to rebuild (i7 16" MBP, ~300GB data).
You can see the indexing progress by opening the Spotlight search field and enter some characters; a progress bar will show underneath.

It worked well again once the rebuild was complete. Yeah!
 

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