Nothing comes up in Finder search, even for files I can see that are present

[halledise]

Update to 13.1 before you do any further troubleshooting.

ventura is a crock, unless one is into multiple 'sharing' etc.
monterey is way more stable, more user-friendly and pretty quick as well.
i went back to monterey with my M2 MBA and am very happy.
just my $2 worth

 

[davidlv]

No, I don't recall it working in Ventura at all, ever. It worked excellently before. I've restarted, but haven't rebooted. This is what shows up in Spotlight:

Why do you insist on using Spotlight? Try EasyFind

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

If set up correctly it will show files searched for and you can delete them on the search results page, or quickly access the enclosing folder in the path bar under the search window. And it's freeware!

 

[halledise]

command+space …
not too hard.

 

[A.Mathias]

Hey! Well, it's been a while. I tried all the suggestions and nothing worked. Last week, I had another, unrelated issue and asked the tech guy to take a look at my removable HD. Long story short: there was nothing to be done to index that HD. Copied the data over to a new HD and now everything works fine.

Thanks again for the helpful responses!