Finder No Longer Finds

[Laisha]

No matter what I put in the search field, FINDER either finds nothing at all or everything.

This was happening only intermittently until this morning, when that's all that happens. Most often, it appears to be alphabetizing the files on my drive, the TimeMachine drive, and Dropbox and presenting them to me.

So I whipped out my EasyFinder -- you know, the one with the squirrel on it? -- and it's finding nothing at all, no matter what I try.

Nothing of consequence happened that I can think of.

Can I re-index my files? Would it help if I did? How does one go about that?

 

[Significant1]

Rebuild spotlight: https://support.apple.com/el-gr/HT201716

 

[DeltaMac]

Have to ask - Did you try restarting your Mac?

Yes, easy to re-index the spotlight database (and would not have any affect on EasyFinder.)
graphic method - Open System Preferences, then Spotlight pane. Go to Privacy tab. Add your hard drive to that tab.
Close System Prefs, reopen to Spotlight. Delete your hard drive from the Privacy tab.
Wait a few seconds, then open the Spotlight search window, and attempt a search of some random item. You should see a progress bar near the top of that Spotlight window. Some systems can take a long time to rebuild, anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. And, that's some maintenance for Spotlight.
(essentially the same as post #2 above. )

 

[posguy99]

So I whipped out my EasyFinder -- you know, the one with the squirrel on it? -- and it's finding nothing at all, no matter what I try.

EasyFind couldn't care less about Spotlight indexes, it does not use them. If EasyFind cannot find a file, it is not there to find.

Myself, I bit the bullet and invested in HoudaSpot (which *does* care about Spotlight, unfortunately). EasyFind, sadly, is 32-bit and there has been no sign DEVONtechnologies is going to transition it forwards.

 

[Laisha]

Yep. I restarted it before posting.

Thank you @Significant1 and @DeltaMac!

It seems to have fixed itself when I re-indexed it per both of your instructions.

Any idea why that happens?
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EasyFind couldn't care less about Spotlight indexes, it does not use them. If EasyFind cannot find a file, it is not there to find.

I always thought that too, but I was wrong. It went haywire same time between last March -- which was the last time I had to use EasyFind and today when I had to try again. There were more than 30 files that began with the first word in my search. EasyFind found not a single one.