Apple Preview: Search feature broken in macOS 10.14.3?

[mhschmieder]

For the past month or two, the search feature has not worked in Apple Preview, which results in a lot of lost time when I have to manually scroll entire user manuals to try to find what I'm looking for. This worked before.

Anyone else experiencing this? If so, is there a quick fix? Maybe 10.14.4 update takes care of it?

Even if I search for simple stuff like "the", there are no results found, regardless of case sensitivity. I remember successfully searching the same manuals previously so do not believe they are all image-based vs. object-based.

[DAWdler]

I have had issues with search with Outlook 365 on my wife’s computer. Re-indexing Spotlight worked.

[mikehalloran]

I, too, am on OS 10.13.3. Because of the eGPU/DisplayLink issue on a 2010 iMac, I'm stuck here.

I have no problem searching Preview using Control f — works fine for me. Remember, you can also open pdf files in a browser — again, Control f should work. I both daily. It also works in Excel and GoogleDocs.

Searching my Mac, however, doesn't work at all, Spotlight or Finder. Re-indexing Spotlight hasn't helped. Apple Support can't figure it out either. I'm thinking it may be a bug in 10.13.3. Disabling one of my monitors so that I can go to 10.13.6 or swapping with my wife's 2011 i5 are non-starters. Many's the time I've regretted not spending the extra $200 on hers to get the i7.

I'm hoping to get a new iMac soon. I expect that Search will work. If not, I'll make Apple Support own the issue.

Meanwhile, I have a number of workarounds and none are pleasant.

Oh... Yahoo! Business Mail is all f$%% as of about 6pm last night. Apple says they're working on it.

Life's a cher o' bowlies at the moment.

[bayswater]

No problems with Preview, but I've never had much consistency with Apple find or Spotlight. Even with Spotlight set up to index the relevant folders, it often can't find files I'm looking at as it searches.

I use EasyFind. Free, looks at file name or contents or phase of the moon and finds stuff.

[mhschmieder]

Strangely, it's working on some PDF's but not others. On the ones it doesn't work on, if I copy/paste some specific text and then place it in the finder bar, no matches are found. So it isn't an image vs. object issue, unless there's text recognition going on using known installed fonts, allowing the copy function on document text but not the search feature. Very odd.

[mhschmieder]

Nothing changed after doing the 10.14.4 update just now. It might be a document-specific issue.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

10.14.6 here and I started seeing this in one file tonight. Only one! Must be the file, but still, not giving me that warm and fuzzy feeling...

http://www.midilifecrisis.com/misc_imag ... 7%20PM.png

[mikehalloran]

It's the file. I ran into this all the time in my previous job. Nothing quite like sifting through a couple hundred pages of, say, property records or board meeting notes to figure out who really owned a business. Cisdem PDF Converter OCR saved me a lot of time.

Preview, Acrobat etc. are looking for embedded font information. If the file was created by saving or exporting a document to pdf, it will be there.

If the pdf was created by simply scanning an original, then it's a picture of the text unless OCR was included in the scan. Control f will not find text if the document's really a picture. You'd have to feed it through OCR first. If the doc is something you expect to refer to later, that might be a good idea. Say there's a manual you found online for a piece of vintage gear you own—might be worth scanning through OCR so that Control f will work later.

I picked up Cisdem in a bundle a few years ago and it's pretty good.
There are many such apps out there.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

It occurred to me it could be the pdf but it works in other projects. I’m pretty sure it a corrupted DP file. More shortly.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks, Mike. Lookie here...

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