Entourage Spotlight results missing in Snow Leopard, Possible fix

[MikeTRose]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: Exchange

If you are not seeing any Spotlight results in Entourage even after a rebuild, and your Caches/Metadata/Microsoft folder is missing:

Go to Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office and manually launch the Microsoft Sync Services application. It's faceless, so you won't see anything happen, but if you then go to the Metadata folder you should see the Microsoft folder reappear and your caches start repopulating.

Worked for me, your mileage may vary. Not sure why it's behaving differently under Snow Leopard.

 

[MikeTRose]

Hmm, it gets more interesting. Even though the metadata cache folder is updating, I'm still not seeing any results in search...

Manually forcing a Spotlight update from Terminal provides the following clue:

% mdimport ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Microsoft/Entourage/2008
Plugin '/Library/Spotlight/FLPlugin.mdimporter' does not match current 64 bit architecture to import type 'public.folder'.
'/Library/Spotlight/FLPlugin.mdimporter' should be updated. 'arch -i386 mdimport' may work as a work-around.
Plugin '/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Entourage.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Entourage.mdimporter' does not match current 64 bit architecture to import type 'com.microsoft.entourage08.virtual.message'.
'/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Entourage.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Entourage.mdimporter' should be updated. 'arch -i386 mdimport' may work as a work-around.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Trying the suggested 'arch -1386 mdimport' command now.

That's for FLPlugin.mdimporter, and I don't believe this one is made by
MS.

The other message after this one mentioned a 64 bit issue.
It almost sounds like you need a 64 bit version of the mdimporter to
deal with indexing Entourage messages on your Mac (I can only assume you
have a 64-bit capable Mac).
Out of curiosity, did you boot normally or did you force-load the 64 bit
kernel?

Corentin

 

[MikeTRose]

Hi Corentin,

Look further down in the error message -- the same workaround is suggested for the Microsoft Entourage.mdimporter plugin.

For what it's worth, forcing the arch -i386 mdimport appears to have worked. Existing content was indexed and newly-created messages appear to be showing up in search. Don't know yet whether this particular configuration will survive a restart, and don't know why the Sync Services app was not working automatically.

I do have a 64-bit EFI capable machine (MacBook Pro C2D), but I am booted with the 32-bit kernel. The mdworker process that handles Spotlight indexing appears to be running 64-bit, but subsequent to the command above I now have an addtional 'mdworker32' process showing up.

If this issue applies to any .mdimporter plugin it's going to extend well beyond Entourage.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I do have a 64-bit EFI capable machine (MacBook Pro C2D), but I am
booted with the 32-bit kernel. The mdworker process that handles
Spotlight indexing appears to be running 64-bit, but subsequent to the
command above I now have an addtional 'mdworker32' process showing up.

I was wondering whether a 64 bit kernel might affect Spotlight's
capacity to load 32 bit mdimporter.
My understanding was that Spotlight *should have been able* to properly
load the 32 bit mdimporters.

I haven't had a chance to play with that myself (I have a 32 bit Mac
with Entourage and a 64 where I hardly ever use Entourage).


Corentin

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

If you are not seeing any Spotlight results in Entourage even after a
rebuild, and your Caches/Metadata/Microsoft folder is missing:

Go to Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office and manually launch
the Microsoft Sync Services application. It's faceless, so you won't
see anything happen, but if you then go to the Metadata folder you
should see the Microsoft folder reappear and your caches start
repopulating.

Worked for me, your mileage may vary. Not sure why it's behaving
differently under Snow Leopard.

Hi Mike!

I've checked my caches and they're all intact after my 10.6 upgrade. New
messages are appearing just fine.

Did you first try using the Rebuild button under Entourage menu -->
Preferences... --> General Preferences --> Spotlight? The Entourage
Database Daemon must be running (it should already be running) for this
to work. It is responsible for creating the caches.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[MikeTRose]

Hi Bill!

Yes, I did try the "Rebuild" button several times to no effect before manually launching the Sync Services app. The Database Daemon *was* running but was not creating the stub files to be indexed, and as noted above once the files were in place they weren't getting indexed until I 'forced' the mdimport.

Subsequent to a reboot, my machine appears to be indexing properly. I'm wondering if possibly the Launch Services DB was corrupt? Something wasn't working correctly if Sync Services didn't launch on its own.

It seems clear that this is not a widespread issue, but since there were a few posts referring to issues with Spotlight post-10.6, I thought I would share my workaround in case there are any other users with a similar problem.

 

[darrenoia]

Thanks for the information, MikeTRose -- I never would have figured this one out on my own. In my case, I couldn't get the thing to create a cache no matter what I did, but I copied one over from my other machine and once it was there, the arch -1386 mdimport did the trick.

No idea why it worked out of the gate on my MacBookPro but not on my iMac.