Alfred not finding certain documents.

[RobJ]

Hi everyone, 

 

I've been a regular user of Alfred for some time now and find it fairly indispensable for speedily getting around my computer. Primarily I use it to locate documents quickly and am not really interested in some of its other functions. 

 

I have for a while been experiencing some problems in that Alfred is just not finding certain documents. This is obviously then really frustrating because I have to go through Finder to locate it.

 

As an example,  I have a document entitled 'Winter/Spring 2019 Productivity Planner' but when I type 'open productivity' into Alfred, that particular document is not coming up at all. It doesn't come up with the 'Find' function either. The same document also does not come up in Spotlight.

 

It seems to be fairly random and arbitrary which documents come up and which don't. And it seems to re-configure itself after a while so that a document that I use regularly which doesn't come up, later I find it there when I go to use it again. I did think that there might have been a pattern in that recently opened documents don't show up but I'm not sure.

 

Here's what I've done to try and solve the issue:

 

• Downloaded Alfred 3 (I was previously using an older version)
• Basic computer reboot
• Reload Alfred cache
• Limited my search scope to just the folders that I would like to search in. Prior to changing this I had the default settings and I had the 'Include folders in Home' button ticked.
• I have made sure that my Spotlight search results are checked. 

 

I have also tried to reindex my Mac. I did have some confusion with this and the internet seems to suggest that this is the most likely solution to the problem so let me walk you through what I did and you guys can let me know if I did it wrong.

 

1. I went to the 'Advanced' tab on Alfred's preferences and clicked 'Rebuild MacOS Metadata'
2. I have done this with and without clicking the 'Delete /.Spotlight-V100' button.
3. I press enter to continue as per the instructions on Terminal and I enter my password successfully.
4. If I have clicked the 'Delete /.Spotlight-V100' button, at this point it tells me that the 'Operation is not permitted' but either way it always says 'Indexing enabled'.
5. It then gives the instruction 'Press any key to close Terminal and continue' . All of the keys that I press just type into Terminal with no discernible effect and if I wait, nothing seems to happen. If I press enter then it seems to finish and it says 'Process completed'. 

 

Then I'm done. It makes no difference at all. Some places on the web seem to say that rebuilding the metadata can take hours but that's all I can seem to do. Not sure if I'm doing it wrong or missing a step or I should not press enter at step 5 and just wait it out. 

 

Any other suggestions. Thanks for your help!

[RobJ]

I would have added screenshots but they seemed too big. 

[Vero]

@RobJ If you're seeing that error when trying to rebuild your Mac's index, I'm assuming you're on macOS Mojave.

 

If that's the case, pop open your System Preferences to the Security & Privacy tab > Privacy > Full Disk Access, and add Terminal to the list of permitted apps.

 

You can then go through rebuilding using Alfred's reindexing, and won't see the error message. (Though please let us know if you get any other error message, as this could indicate an indexing issue). 

 

Once you've typed your password into Terminal, the full reindex can take up to an hour, though it's usually much quicker. 

 

Beyond this, be sure to check the Indexing Troubleshooting guide, in case you've moved the files you're looking for and they're no longer in Alfred's index.

 

If the issue persists, please give details of:

- The file's name and path

- Whether any other files like it are found, or whether no files are found

- Whether these are normal files or part of a cloud-based service (in which case the actual file may not be on your Mac, just a representation of it until you need it)

 

You can also use the Alfred Metadata Tool to work out whether any of the metadata that *should* be included with your file is present:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/mdls/

 

Cheers,
Vero

[RobJ]

@Vero Thanks for the comment, I appreciate the reply. I did what you said and decided to wait a bit to see if it would work (plus I have been very busy!) but the problem continues. 

 

So I added Terminal to the list of permitted apps and was able to avoid the error message. No other error message seemed to come, but the whole process still only took a matter of seconds so it's making me feel that something's amiss. 

 

Following that, there  are still files that sporadically don't come up. It seems to be random, it's all files and sometimes they're there and sometimes they're not. They are normal files saved straight onto the Mac. 

 

I can try and upload pictures again if that helps. 

 

Any other ideas? 

 

Thanks