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robinwn's avatar
robinwn
Helpful | Level 6
4 years ago
Solved

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...
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  • davidarden's avatar
    davidarden
    4 years ago

    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!

     

     

     

youmailtocarlos's avatar
youmailtocarlos
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Hello Hannah,

It's becoming even stranger, I've recently observed. Spotlight instantly locates documents containing the word(s) I input into the search window IF the document is stored on my Macintosh HD outside of Dropbox. But if I navigate to a specific document where I'm certain the searched word exists and open it manually, then Spotlight is able to locate the document itself. Does this make sense? It's as if I'm creating a pathway for Spotlight to access the documents I manually open, yet it seems Spotlight cannot discover them on its own otherwise. How can I fix it in order not to have to open every single document in Dropbox to make them searchable? Thank you for any help.

Hannah's avatar
Hannah
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

Strange, indeed, youmailtocarlos.

 

Does this issue go away, when the Dropbox app is closed?

  • youmailtocarlos's avatar
    youmailtocarlos
    Explorer | Level 3
    3 years ago

    Yes, the same story.

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