Searching/spotlight problems

L

lesterm

Guest
Hi all,

I have only switched over to Mac from PC in the last few days, so I am really new to the OS. With that being said, I am having some spotlight/searching problems that I have not found an answer to while doing a forum search.

I attached an external HD with files from my windows machine (the external HD is formatted with HFS+ and I transferred the files using MacDrive), and I am having some trouble searching the drive. First off, it seems that spotlight has indexed certain files, but not only a few. I tried doing an mdimport but I think that screwed up my index for some reason, as spotlight ceased to function correct, so I used mdutil to rebuild the spotlight index. That seemed to fix my spotlight issue, but now I am back to where I started. Is there any way to get spotlight to index the drive?

Another problem I encountered is how to do a manual search. Is there any way to do a manual search using finder? When I am in finder I did tried using the search function, but it doesn't seem to work at all. I input my search string and it completes in under a second with 0 results found. Is there something I am missing?

Any advice on spotlight/finder searches would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
OP
L

lesterm

Guest
It seems I have sorted out the spotlight/finder issues (or rather my computer sorted it out itself), but I was wondering now if it was possible to search for hidden files or those prefixed with a "." without using command line?

I am trying to clean up my folders imported from the windows machine, but windows creates a lot of files that are no longer useful (desktop.ini, thumbnails folders, etc). I have currently been using command line and searching/deleting everything that way, but is there an easier way that utilizes the GUI?
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top