Alfred Not Finding Files - Variable Behavior

[meiotic_Drive]

Hello,

 

I have seen other threads about this topic, and I want to say up front I am not sure this is an Alfred bug.

 

Here is the behavior:

I have two folders named as "2015 Reviews". I have two copies of this folder -  synchronized between my fusion drive iMac and in a dropbox folder (on the same machine).

 

When I attempt to search for this folder, the result returned is virtually always the most recently accessed version of the folder. When I open and search spotlight, sometimes I see the same result, and somethings spotlight shows both folders as being present.

 

I have reindexed the drive and do not believe there are issues with the spotlight index per se (or at least the behavior does not go away).

 

So a couple of questions/hypotheses:

1. Do identically named folders (albeit with different paths) perform poorly with spotlight and/or Alfred? Are they not able to be indexed correctly?

 

2. I have a fusion drive - that is supposed to load files you use regularly into the SSD portion of the drive. Is it possible that only a portion of the spotlight index loads? This might explain the behavior I see (with the most recently access file always being found)

 

thx,

 

Mike

[Vero]

I have reindexed the drive and do not believe there are issues with the spotlight index per se (or at least the behavior does not go away).

 

So a couple of questions/hypotheses:

1. Do identically named folders (albeit with different paths) perform poorly with spotlight and/or Alfred? Are they not able to be indexed correctly?

 

2. I have a fusion drive - that is supposed to load files you use regularly into the SSD portion of the drive. Is it possible that only a portion of the spotlight index loads? This might explain the behavior I see (with the most recently access file always being found)

 

Hi Mike, 

 

That sounds like odd behaviour - Could you tell me whether the folder that's not showing up correctly is the one in Dropbox? My theory is that there may be something funny going on with the files on Dropbox that may cause them to not be indexed correctly.

 

Try temporarily changing the name of the problem folder, leaving it a few minutes, then re-naming it back. This forces OS X to reindex that folder specifically, so may kick the reindex into gear.

 

Alfred and OS X can absolutely handle multiple files with the same name (e.g. I have 6 folders all called Accounting, living in different paths on my Mac) so identical names is just a coincidence.

 

Let me know how you get on

 

Cheers,

Vero

[meiotic_Drive]

OK - I will troubleshoot this as I have time. The folder is sometimes in Dropbox, sometimes on my hard drive. Even in spotlight, I have noticed that it will not be found immediately but shows up in the search results eventually. The time delay is odd - which made me wonder about the fusion drive. Certainly once I go to the finder and open the folder - it now shows up immediately in search results. Perhaps there is an indexing problem at the base of this.

[meiotic_Drive]

So I deleted my spotlight index from the terminal and rebuilt the index overnight. I also cleared the Alfred cache, cleared knowledge, reset the search scope. And the behavior is basically the same - but I do not think this is an Alfred issue. So for example:

 

1. I have a folder on Dropbox at this path:

 

/Users/mzwick/Dropbox/Work/Dean

 

  I see this folder in Alfred and Spotlight.

 

2. I have another folder of the same name, different path:

/Users/mzwick/Documents/Dean

 

I do not see this folder in either Alfred or Spotlight

 

3. I now use the Finder to open the folder in #2. Now when I search spotlight and use Alfred for 'Dean, the top two results are the files in 1 and 2. Both results are also shown in Spotlight.

I really think this is some sort of Apple bug. It seems as though that portion of the index is not loaded. I can repeat this for a number of other folders.

 

The behavior seems odd.

[meiotic_Drive]

Vero,

 

So changing the folder name (as you suggest) makes the folder now visible - resolving the problem (although nested folders are still not found). This is clearly some sort of indexing issue with spotlight.

 

Mike

[Andrew]

Vero,

 

So changing the folder name (as you suggest) makes the folder now visible - resolving the problem (although nested folders are still not found). This is clearly some sort of indexing issue with spotlight.

 

Mike

 

When you reindexed, did you do it from the shortcut in Alfred's Advanced prefs? If so, did you select the option to delete the /.Spotlight-V100 folder? If not, this can usually remove any corruption or indexing oddities.

[meiotic_Drive]

Yes. And then I reinstalled the OS (so I know that I killed the old indexes). The indexing is now complete.  I am attaching two screen shots that seem to exemplify what I am seeing.
 
I am searching for a folder called: Service
 
When I look in Spotlight - I see three copies (as there should be).
 
When I search in Alfred - I see only one folder copy.
 
Why is this different?

 

I have a couple of screen shots I would be glad to send along.

[Andrew]

Yes. And then I reinstalled the OS (so I know that I killed the old indexes). The indexing is now complete.  I am attaching two screen shots that seem to exemplify what I am seeing.

 

I am searching for a folder called: Service

 

When I look in Spotlight - I see three copies (as there should be).

 

When I search in Alfred - I see only one folder copy.

 

Why is this different?

 

I have a couple of screen shots I would be glad to send along.

 

I'm not seeing the screenshots... could you pop them in an email to our info@ email address and I'll take a look