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Dropbox content isn't searchable in Spotlight when using 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 sure Dropbox has full access in Security and Privacy. Help please?
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!
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I am trying to search for the file name. There is neither a green tick nor a cloud icon as you can see in the attached screenshot. FYI, the Dropbox app IS running and when right-clicking, I see all the expected options: View on Dropbox, Make Available Offline, etc.
I'm having the same issue. What's more, my apps on Mac OS 12.6 can't see any DropBox files. I literally can't work right now, as one of my apps uses a database located inside of DropBox. I updated to the new version of DropBox last week, and assume all would be synced by now. I tried selecting "make files available offline" but no change. Help!
- I updated Dropbox to version v159.4.5870 on my Mac, which (as expected) moved the files to ~/Library/CloudStorage. Now, searching my Dropbox folder in Finder no longer works - zero results returned, every time. I'm running Mac OS 12.6. Any idea how to fix this?
MarkBarLev Sweet - glad to hear it!
It looks like your solution worked for me too. Thanks so much. It was so frustrating.
- Great! Thanks. I’ll try it, especially since escalated Dropbox support takes days to get back to me and doesn’t have a solution.
JimmyDinh Nice!! Glad I could help.
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.
Thank you, @davidarden!!! It worked for me!!! I AM ELATED!!!
