spotlight won't find a document by searching for a word in that doc

[maria86004]

Version: 2004 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Spotlight will find a Word document if I type in a word in the title. Usually I do not know the title.
If I type in a word contained within the document, it will not find it.
Spotlight will find a document by a word contained in the document if it is a pdf or rtf file. it will not do it with microsoft products as it won't do it with Word and excel.
I called Mac. They said that my spotlight was funcitoning properly and that microsoft did not design their office products to do this. When I used a pc I could search this way.
Does this sound right?
Do you know if I bought office 2008 for students if I could search Word document this way?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Maria:

We do know that Microsoft and Apple are fond of blaming each other for this
issue.

We also know that Spotlight tends to read only the first 150 kb of a file,
so if you have a nice big picture in the front, you may not see much text.

Most important is to run your updates. Apple and Microsoft have both put
out updates trying to resolve this issue. If your system is fully
up-to-date, you will get this problem less.

Run Software Update first. Post back if you need complete instructions on
how to update the Spotlight MDI Importers.

Cheers

Version: 2004 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Spotlight will find a
Word document if I type in a word in the title. Usually I do not know the
title.
If I type in a word contained within the document, it will not find it.
Spotlight will find a document by a word contained in the document if it is a
pdf or rtf file. it will not do it with microsoft products as it won't do it
with Word and excel.
I called Mac. They said that my spotlight was funcitoning properly and that
microsoft did not design their office products to do this. When I used a pc I
could search this way.
Does this sound right?
Do you know if I bought office 2008 for students if I could search Word
document this way?

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

IIRC, the info you were given by "Mac" is correct, but misleading My
recollection is that in OS X 10.4.x Spotlight was limited as to how deeply
it looked into a file when doing a content search. What I don't recall is
whether the matter was fully resolved by updates. Confirm that your Office
2004 is at 11.5.6 & that Tiger is at the 10.4.11 level.

Which version of Word creates the file is irrelevant. What I can say is that
Spotlight does function more effectively for content searches from the Open
dialog in Leopard & Snow Leopard than I remember it doing in Tiger. This
appears to be true regardless of which version of Word I'm using.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[maria86004]

I went to the apple icon top, left, software update and it said I was up to date. I went to Word and check for updates and it said there were no new updates. I think I need the specific instructions to look for the spotlight updates. Thanks so much for you help.

 

[CyberTaz]

Spotlight is a function of OS X, so as long as your installation of Tiger is
up-to-date (10.4.11) Spotlight is as current as it can get.

I've done a bit more experimentation with Spotlight on my Tiger-based PPC &
it appears that the feature is even less effective for content searches than
I remember it being when using the Search box in an Open dialog. It doesn't
seem to matter whether using Word 2004 or 2008, Apple's own TextEdit or
Pages, or InDesign CS4, content searches are hit-or-miss at best. Even using
words known to be at the beginning of a document & selecting the folder the
file is in, the Search box fails to produce that document in its list.

I'd suggest that you use Spotlight from a Finder window or from the Menu
Bar. There are also the keystrokes Command+Spacebar &
Option+Command+Spacebar which access Spotlight while in any program. That
seems to be the only reliable implementation for searching based on content.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

OK. Read the following, first:
http://www.macintouch.com/tigerreview/spotlight.html

If you are prepared to work slowly and carefully in the command line using
terminal, while logged in as root, then we can send you the instructions.

But most people just give up and say "it doesn't work on Tiger"

That's not true, it does work, and if you update the mdimport
Files, flush the spotlight caches, delete the Spotlight index, then re-index
the volume: you will make an improvement.

Sadly: not much of one, often!

Hope this helps

I went to the apple icon top, left, software update and it said I was up to
date. I went to Word and check for updates and it said there were no new
updates. I think I need the specific instructions to look for the spotlight
updates. Thanks so much for you help.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]