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Forum Discussion
Dropbox is not searchable in Mac OS Monterey 12.0.1
Dropbox files/folders are not searchable in spotlight on new MacBook Pro with M1 chip - Monterey OS 12.0.1. Have re-indexed spotlight. Have uninstalled and reinstalled Dropbox and rebooted. Have made...
I have found a solution, everyone! I hope everyone struggling with this will find this post. The problem isn't with dropbox, it's with Mac Spotlight. Which surprised me, as I always thought the finder search was separate from Spotlight, but apparently, on the back end, both are one-in-the-same. I've heard many times that re-indexing spotlight didn't work, but it does! You just have to do it a different way for everything to ACTUALLY 100% reindex.
Tutorial is here on apple's forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253479408
Just giving credit where credit is due.
In case that goes away, instructions are also listed below.
- Open System Preferences and go to Spotlight's Privacy tab.
- Add the entire hard disk INTO the Privacy list.
- Maybe wait 30s.
- Remove the hard disk FROM the Privacy list.
Spotlight will re-index. After finish re-indexing, the search in folder works for me.
(To see if Spotlight is indexing, use Command+Space to invoke Spotlight, and type in something. Wait a second. You should see a progress bar to show indexing progress)
Of note, I am on Mac OS Monterey 12.6 (21G115). My dropbox version is 158.4.4564. These are both the lastest, as of now, 10.3.2022.
Hopefully this helps! Changed my life - I can work again!
Having the same problem, but only in the folder that the most recent update of the dropbox back end created with my user name on it (business account). There's another folder inside my dropbox folder that is searchable using Mac spotlight search just fine. I have an open ticket with Dropbox support but as of yet they haven't had any solution.
I have found a solution, everyone! I hope everyone struggling with this will find this post. The problem isn't with dropbox, it's with Mac Spotlight. Which surprised me, as I always thought the finder search was separate from Spotlight, but apparently, on the back end, both are one-in-the-same. I've heard many times that re-indexing spotlight didn't work, but it does! You just have to do it a different way for everything to ACTUALLY 100% reindex.
Tutorial is here on apple's forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253479408
Just giving credit where credit is due.
In case that goes away, instructions are also listed below.
- Open System Preferences and go to Spotlight's Privacy tab.
- Add the entire hard disk INTO the Privacy list.
- Maybe wait 30s.
- Remove the hard disk FROM the Privacy list.
Spotlight will re-index. After finish re-indexing, the search in folder works for me.
(To see if Spotlight is indexing, use Command+Space to invoke Spotlight, and type in something. Wait a second. You should see a progress bar to show indexing progress)
Of note, I am on Mac OS Monterey 12.6 (21G115). My dropbox version is 158.4.4564. These are both the lastest, as of now, 10.3.2022.
Hopefully this helps! Changed my life - I can work again!
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey davidarden, thanks for sharing this with us!
If everyone can try this and let us know if it worked for you, that'd be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Thank you, @davidarden!!! It worked for me!!! I AM ELATED!!!
- Great! Thanks. I’ll try it, especially since escalated Dropbox support takes days to get back to me and doesn’t have a solution.
It looks like your solution worked for me too. Thanks so much. It was so frustrating.
MarkBarLev Sweet - glad to hear it!
OMG. It worked! I followed your suggestion, davidarden, from the apple forum, with a couple of minor differences (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253479408):
- Open System Preferences and go to Spotlight's Privacy tab. (On my computer, I went to System Settings, then "Siri & Spotlight," then scrolled all the way down to find "Spotlight Privacy.")
- Add the entire hard disk INTO the Privacy list. (I did that, clicked "Done," and closed the window.)
- Maybe wait 30s. (I went to make a cup of tea. 😉)
- Remove the hard disk FROM the Privacy list. (I went back in to the window, highlighted the disk and clicked the minus "-" button, then clicked done and closed the window.)
Spotlight will re-index. After finish re-indexing, the search in folder works for me. (IT WORKED!!!)
(To see if Spotlight is indexing, use Command+Space to invoke Spotlight, and type in something. Wait a second. You should see a progress bar to show indexing progress)
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Hi David. Did you try doing this with just the Dropbox folder first and that didn't work but when you did the entire drive it did? I haven't consciously done the whole drive, but I did re-index a big chunk of it, to no avail. But if the above is true, I can try again.
MarkBarLev Hi Mark. I tried pretty much everything in the book. The only thing that worked was reindexing the entire HDD, per the instructions in the Spotlight section of system preferences. Also, there were a few posts that spoke of using terminal commands to reindex. None of that worked for me. Good news is this is pretty simple and took about an hour to fully reindex everything, at least for me, and 100% fixed the problem.
JimmyDinh Nice!! Glad I could help.
- Thank you so much, this has prevented me from buying a new windows laptop now!
Search hasn’t worked for months and nothing I could find could sort it out. Tried this and it’s working great now!
Was impossible to work efficiently before, having to have Dropbox open in a browser window to find out where files are and the LN manually opening them in finder!
Thanks again 👍
