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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!
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.
Hmmm. For me, if I open DropBox from the DropBox icon, it takes me to the expected folder with all my items. But if I look in Finder for DropBox it doesn't exist, and my apps can't find it to open any files or databases therein. I tried to make a Finder hotlink in the Finder sidebar to the DropBox folder that opened from the icon, but no dice. Hope they can help us soon.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey bri_guy and vmkirin, thanks for the additional info here.
Are you having this issue specifically with Spotlight search?
If so, there are a few reasons you might be experiencing issues with it.
Following the update where the Dropbox folder was moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage , Spotlight sometimes does not re-index the folder until after it is opened for the first time.
Could you try opening the Dropbox folder in Finder, and then allow a little time for indexing to take place before retrying Spotlight search?
Another reason is that the Spotlight index may need to be rebuilt, carry out the steps in this article.
Note: the article mentions the ‘Documents’ folder but you need to use the Dropbox folder instead.
If none of the above steps help, please let me know and we can take another look.
