The Mac Admin's Blog

This problem might happen with any MS Office file. Some of the Mac users noticed that many of my Excel documents were not indexed as part of the Spotlight database; Spotlight search results for obviously-known content was coming up empty. The reason for this invisibility was that I still had Microsoft Office 2004 installed (some of the users keep this for macro compatibility), and when this happens, the old PowerPC version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter still sits in your ~/Library/Spotlight folder. Many mdworker console messages were indicating that only a PowerPC importer plug-in was found , thus many Office documents weren't getting indexed. The solution to this is to trash the PowerPC version of this file, and trash the /.Spotlight-V100 file, which forced a total re-indexing. The system then used the Intel version of the Spotlight importer, and all my Office documents are once again indexed.

How to disable the spotlight in Snow Leopard In our last post we discussed about disabling spotlight in 10.5, now I will mention the way to make it happen in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Disabling Spotlight in Snow Leopard is simple, all you need to do is launch the Terminal and type the following command: sudo mdutil -a -i off This will give a command to the Spotlight manager to disable all indexing on the mounted volumes, this command requires your admin password to execute. Re-enabling Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as easy as disabling, just type 'on' instead of 'off' as below: sudo mdutil -a -i on Now everything should be cool as it was. Additional tips & tricks are available here.

How to disable the spotlight in Leopard Here is small tip to disable the spotlight, if you don't want it to work, just m ove these two files to another safe location and then reboot your mac. /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist If you want to re-enable Spotlight just move those files back to their previous/original location, reboot your Mac and Spotlight will start working again. Please make sure that you  backup these files, if by any chance you delete them, you will not be able to reactivate Spotlight without a reinstalling the OS.

How to hide a folder from Spotlight If you have some personal stuffs and dont want others to peep into it even though they are using Spotlight to find stuffs, you have to follow the below mentioned steps and stop spotlight searching there. 1. Go to System Preferences and select Spotlight icon. 2. Select the privacy tab. 3. Under, "Prevent spotlight from searching these locations" select the folders that you want to stay hidden. 4. To add the folder, click on the ' + ' icon and select the desired folder.

Short Intro About Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is Apple's next operating system after Tiger i.e. 10.4 that was launched more than two years ago. Apple claims that there are more than 300 differences on Tiger and Leopard, while not earth-shattering, further streamline the experience of using a Mac . Now the very next question comes to your mind would be, "Is Leopard worth paying what Apple has set his price to?" For some of you it maybe not, because you are contented with the way Tiger works for you. If you are looking for Time Machine , you need a Leopard, if you need Bootcamp, even then you must have Leopard. Leopard makes it far easier to find documents and applications than Windows Vista . The recently launched Spotlight is just impressing. Leopard's interface niceties made the daily mechanics of using the computer more pleasurable. Mundane chores, such as finding files and backing up data, become a visual treat (See our photo gallery of screenshots .) Mac OS X

Now use Spotlight feature for Entourage As soon as you get 11.2.3 Update installed on your OS X, Spotlight feature is ready to execute searches in your Entourage database contents. Spotlight has the capability to search and locate the mail from your Entourage regarless of where it is. You can find any item (to specify Email, Notes and Schedules) related to any kind of mail account (POP, IMAP or Exchange) which could be saved inside your Entourage database. Spotlight can search all folders of all types be it of any type of mail account. So now without browsing to search option in Entourage you can find data in all locations across all folders in Entourge, hence making you work faster then ever.Now get the things done faster than you have been doing, the best way to impress for your boss. Here is the setting that needs to be done: Once selected, you will be able to use this option. On this window you will find a button that says Rebuild. If we select REMOVE AND RECREATE Entourage i