How to get Spotlight to recognize new file formats

fireball1244fireball1244
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
So, I installed Mac OS X Tiger on my iBook, where I routinely use OmniOutliner 3 Pro. Today, I installed the new version of OO3P, which is supposed to open the file format up for Spotlight searching. How do I get Spotlight to recognize this so that I can search through these files? Do I need to restart? Log out and back in? At present, even with the new version of Outliner installed, those files don't show up in my searches.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    You probably need to restart?
  • Reply 2 of 4
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Logging out/in should be enough, as would be killing off the Dock process (which controls Spotlight) and letting it relaunch.



    However, note that unless the plugin recognizes that it is being run for the first time, and the devs have enabled it to tell Spotlight to immediately index all OO3 files, you're still not going to see them until they get indexed, which is normally triggered by playing with the file in some way. Saving always triggers a re-index, but Spotlight also manages the 'last opened' time info as well, so merely opening the file *might* trigger the indexing.



    Since I still don't have Tiger, can someone else look for perhaps an 'Index this file now' button in the Spotlight section of the Finder's Get Info panel?
  • Reply 3 of 4
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    There isn't.



    Spotlight will index those files on the fly, but can't peek into them, only get info about its name, when it was last opened, etc. Spotlight needs an importer to do that. Check Apple's Spotlight Plugins page to see if there is one for the filetype or app that you need.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    That's the point... OO3 includes a Spotlight importer.
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