Spotlight doesn't index some DOC/DOCX files

[bwoolley]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I have thousand of Word documents, and have just discovered that some aren't being indexed by Spotlight.
This issue has come up before, with hopes of a fix, but I for one am still having problems with the latest version of Office 2008 (12.1.2).
Spotlight does index some DOC and DOCX files, but not others. I can't find out what distinguishes between the two, though I wonder if it is connected to whether they originated on a Windows system.
If I save a DOC file that hasn't being indexed as an RTF, then it seems to become searchable (i.e. words in the RTF file show up in Spotlight searches).
I have tried rebuilding the Spotlight index, but that doesn't solve the problem.
It is absolutely crucial to me that I can search the contents of all my Word documents, and it was shocking to discover (by accident) this wasn't happening. Valuable information now lies on my system that I can't find.
Has there been any movement on this problem?

 

[Ms. H. Dion]

I am having this exact same problem with Word X, OS 10.5.5, and an Intel machine (MacBook Pro). I *know* the file I'm looking for is there on my main drive (not any external drive), I see it and can open it. The keywords I use for the search are right there. Even copy-pasting them (just in case there's something hidden in there!) in a Spotlight new window doesn't find the file. That's *after* reindexing and also *after* re-saving the file using "Save as…" Like bwoolley, I need to be able to find a file using keywords. What gives?

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I have thousand of Word documents, and have just discovered that some
aren't being indexed by Spotlight.

Only the first xxx KB of raw text get indexed. That should only be an
issue for very long documents though.

The Spotlight mdimporter for Office are not installed with Office
itself. Apple installs them (made by MS) with System updates.
I remember that the current ones have a problem, but at this point,
Apple still hasn't released an update.

On top of that, you could have additional Spotlight issues leading to
this.
To workaround a similar issue, I ended up disabling Spotlight indexing
on my Mac, then re-enabling it to force re-index everything.

It took all night :-\

Corentin