Search / Spotlight not working with Snow Leopard

[tilenius]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: Exchange

I just upgraded two Macs to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) and was able to open Entourage just fine, but to my surprise I could no longer SEARCH my email! On both of them, search results came up dead blank. Even searching All Folders for a common name (like my own) or the word "the" gave a null result.

I've gone into Entourage Preferences, selected Spotlight, and hit "Rebuild" then "OK" but even after several hours, nothing at all is turning up when I do a search. (How long does it take to rebuild a file? I have about 1.6 GB on my mailbox.)

I opened Spotlight preferences and could NOT find an option to have it search Entourage. Mail is checked, in fact every option Spotlight gives me is checked, but there's no listing of Entourage in the Spotlight system preference panel.

A third system (exact same sync) running Leopard (10.5.6) still works fine and doesn't list Entourage under the Spotlight control panel, so I'm assuming that's not the issue.

Any ideas? I am really at a loss without the ability to search emails! I suppose I can wait another day or so for the rebuild to happen, but how do I know when it's done? I'm not even sure if it's rebuilding or not. The fact that I still get NO results even for search terms that should be ubiquitous makes me worry.

Help?!? Anyone else have troubles with Search / Spotlight and Entourage emails after upgrading to Snow Leopard?

Thanks in advance for any tips -- or if this is a bug for its prompt investigation and fix!

- ERIC -

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi Eric,

I just upgraded two Macs to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) and was able to
open Entourage just fine, but to my surprise I could no longer SEARCH my
email! On both of them, search results came up dead blank. Even
searching All Folders for a common name (like my own) or the word "the"
gave a null result.

Typical Spotlight issue.
Actually, you should be aware that after the SL upgrade, Spotlight has
to reindex the entire drive and no file (in ENtourage or elsewhere) can
be found until then.
Did you wait long enough??

I've gone into Entourage Preferences, selected Spotlight, and hit
"Rebuild" then "OK" but even after several hours, nothing at all is
turning up when I do a search. (How long does it take to rebuild a file?
I have about 1.6 GB on my mailbox.)

Well they would only be available after all files on the Mac have be
reindexed. If you have a lot of files it can take even longer than that.
I wouldn't expect Spotlight cache corruption as of yet.

I opened Spotlight preferences and could NOT find an option to have it
search Entourage. Mail is checked, in fact every option Spotlight gives
me is checked, but there's no listing of Entourage in the Spotlight
system preference panel.

You can only do these things through the Terminal.

A third system (exact same sync) running Leopard (10.5.6) still works
fine and doesn't list Entourage under the Spotlight control panel, so
I'm assuming that's not the issue.
Indeed.

Any ideas? I am really at a loss without the ability to search emails! I
suppose I can wait another day or so for the rebuild to happen, but how
do I know when it's done? I'm not even sure if it's rebuilding or not.
The fact that I still get NO results even for search terms that should
be ubiquitous makes me worry.

You can do multiple things.
The forst one is to wait. Really wait up to 24 hours.
Make sure that you can search by content for anything on the mac too,
which is indicative of the reindexing progression.

If this doesn't work, you could try to force-reindex just the Entourage
Spotlight cache folder, but in the past, I found it much better to force
a complete reindexation of the Mac.

The command for that is:
sudo mdutil -E /


Now....... it could also be that the mdworker process (in charge of
indexing your drive) is crashing.
Check in /Library/Logs/DiagnosisReports and
~/Library/Logs/DiagnosisReports and look for mdworker crash logs.
If the process is crashing, then the Mac stops indexing.
Rebuilding the Spotlight index entirely *could* help, but it could be
that one of your mdimporter is not playing along well in SL and it's
going to be tough to figure out which one and to deactivate it.

Corentin

 

[Diane Ross]

(How long does it take to rebuild a file? I have about 1.6 GB on my mailbox.)

This should be fairly quick.

The Entourage Database Daemon must be running (it should already be running)
for this to work. It is responsible for creating the caches.

Entourage 2008 & Spotlight

Help?!? Anyone else have troubles with Search / Spotlight and Entourage emails
after upgrading to Snow Leopard?

We've had several report this issue and rebuild worked.

Here is some feedback from another users:

(if you want to follow the entire thread, search topic "Entourage Spotlight
results missing in Snow Leopard, Possible fix"

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

(that's the Caches folder in your ~/Library)

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.

Part 2:
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.

Part 3
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.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you find a solution.

 

[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.

That's irrelevant. 64 bit capable Ma cwill use Spotlight in 64 bit mode.
I don't know why everybody is so fixated on the kernel. The mode the
kernel uses doesn't affect all the other apps on top of it.
Actually I'm not sure that at this point there is any benefit in running
the nernel in 64 bit.

Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

For what it's worth, forcing the arch -i386 mdimport appears to have worked.

Yeah, I didn't think about this...
What a pain! My bet is that unfortunately, this workaround is a one time
thing. By default, on a 64 bit capable Mac, Spotlight will index in 64
bit mode too and all the 32 bit mdimporters will fail.

I'm afraid that the only solution is to wait for the 64 bit mdimporters
to have it fixed for good.
I don't know any way to permanently force mdworker to run in 32 bit
mode.

Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Yeah, I didn't think about this...
What a pain! My bet is that unfortunately, this workaround is a one time
thing. By default, on a 64 bit capable Mac, Spotlight will index in 64
bit mode too and all the 32 bit mdimporters will fail.

I'm afraid that the only solution is to wait for the 64 bit mdimporters
to have it fixed for good.
I don't know any way to permanently force mdworker to run in 32 bit
mode.

The more I think about this, the more it sounds like a bug in SNow
Leopard.
It will affect all 32 bit mdimporters by the way (and right now, I don't
believe there are many 64 bit mdimporters out there).

I just reindexed ~/Library/Cache/Metadata and ~/Documents using 'arch
-i386 mdimport' and now a lot of Spotlight issues I've been having are
gone!
Leap is a LOT more usable too :->


Corentin

 

[tilenius]

Okay, I just tried the terminal fix described in Diane's post, but am still confused about this whole 32-bit vs. 64-bit mode on mdimport -- is this a Microsoft process? Or an Apple one?

IE: this seems like a bug that needs fixing. Does Microsoft need to update their mdimporter? Or does Apple? I find it hard to believe it's Apple -- Spotlight seems to index everything else fine, just not Entourage.

I just typed in those commands and ran Sync services so will come back later (after a meeting) and see if it's populated.

But definitely Spotlight is showing me everything I'd expect, just no Entourage data. Stay tuned...

 

[tilenius]

Also, I don't have any Microsoft folder under /Library/Caches/Metadata. Doing the steps above doesn't seem to create one! The only folder under Metadata is /Safari.

I do have a com.microsoft.Entourage directory under Caches -- could that be it? That has a "Cache.db" folder but it's only 25K.

I did try running Microsoft Sync Services.

Also FWIW, running mdimport from the terminal didn't give me an error message as it did in the post above.

So, still no luck: Spotlight is searching everything fine, but NO Entourage emails!

Other ideas to try?

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Okay, I just tried the terminal fix described in Diane's post, but am
still confused about this whole 32-bit vs. 64-bit mode on mdimport -- is
this a Microsoft process? Or an Apple one?

Apple.
mdimport allows you to manually index items for Spotlight.

IE: this seems like a bug that needs fixing. Does Microsoft need to
update their mdimporter? Or does Apple? I find it hard to believe it's
Apple -- Spotlight seems to index everything else fine, just not
Entourage.

Well there are two ways to see it:
- either it's a bug and Spotlight should be able to use 32 bit
mdimporters even in 64 bit mode and it's up to Apple to fix it.
- or Apple announced that Spotlight was 64 bit only and that
applications needed to provide 64 bit mdimporters to be compatible — and
it's up to MS to provide a new mdimporter.

I looked around, asked around, etc, and the developers I know were under
the impression that Spotlight should be fine with any Intel, 32 bit
mdimporter.
It turns out it's not all that easy to find good public information from
Apple on this respect.

I just typed in those commands and ran Sync services so will come back
later (after a meeting) and see if it's populated.

But definitely Spotlight is showing me everything I'd expect, just no
Entourage data. Stay tuned...

Not in my case. I can't see EndNote entries for instance.
The problem would only affect files that require a specific mdimporter,
not the file types natively supported by the System (and the System
supports Word Excel and PPT natively for instance).

Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Also, I don't have any Microsoft folder under /Library/Caches/Metadata.
Doing the steps above doesn't seem to create one! The only folder under
Metadata is /Safari.

Wrong location. It should be in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata (in your user
account, not at the root of the boot drive).

Also FWIW, running mdimport from the terminal didn't give me an error
message as it did in the post above.

Is your Mac 64 bit capable?

So, still no luck: Spotlight is searching everything fine, but NO
Entourage emails!

Other ideas to try?

Check if you do have the proper metadata folder in
~/Library/Caches/Metadata

Corentin

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Actually I'm not sure that at this point there is any benefit in
running the nernel in 64 bit.

For home computer users there is really no good reason to boot into
64-bit mode. 64-bit applications should work just fine under 32-bit mode.

64-bit mode will allow your Mac to access more RAM (over 32 GB), but
most home users don't have that amount. This is really a feature for
servers, not laptops and desktops.

--

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>

 

[tilenius]

Okay, it's working again. My best guess is Apple's 10.6.1 update fixed this, as that's the main change I can see. So, if anyone else is having this problem, try doing a SOFTWARE UPDATE to 10.6.1 and see if that fixes it! At least it seemed to to me.

I did also rebuild the database from within Entourage >> Preferences >> Spotlight >> Rebuild.

- ERIC -

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Okay, it's working again. My best guess is Apple's 10.6.1 update fixed
this, as that's the main change I can see. So, if anyone else is having
this problem, try doing a SOFTWARE UPDATE to 10.6.1 and see if that
fixes it! At least it seemed to to me.

Really?? I didn't see *any* improvement on my Mac after updating to
10.6.1.
I still see the same warning in the Terminal actually,


Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

64-bit mode will allow your Mac to access more RAM (over 32 GB), but
most home users don't have that amount. This is really a feature for
servers, not laptops and desktops.

Well and beside that, having the kernel in 64 bit means that 32 bit kext
cannot load. You loose a bunch of kext if you do that (since most of
them are not updated for 64 bit).
Really really I don't see the point.

Corentin