Spotlight no longer brings up my Entourage messages, but still seemsto be indexing?

[RonEdwards_Liberatio]

MAC 10.5.7
Entourage 12.1.7

I'm a new convert from many years of MS and Outlook use and am finding the
MAC a joy.

All was working just fine with spotlight, but a couple of days ago it
stopped giving me an MAIL message results.

Mail is ticked in Spotlight.
No folder in privacy.
Spotlight is ticked and attachments ticked in Entourage

In ~/Library/Caches/Metadata I have a 10gb file under Entourage which I
guess is the Spotlight duplicate file of my Mail folder? I have large folder
that I imported from may years of Outlook use, broken down in various
categories. The meta file has a timestamp of 5 mins ago, so I can only
assume my mail is actually being indexed?

I should add her that spotlight did work and find all emails up until a
couple of days ago. When I key a search word or term in Entourage or the
main spotlight search bar, no mail messages come up.

I'm a heavy mail user and rely on search to find things, so bit of a big
deal for me. If anyone can offer advice I'd gladly listen!!

Thanks in Advance.

Ron

 

[Diane Ross]

All was working just fine with spotlight, but a couple of days ago it
stopped giving me an MAIL message results.

I've seen a couple of reports like this. It was database corruption and was
solved by creating a new Identity.

Because your database is so big, I suggest you create two separate
Identities. One for "this year" and an "archive" Identity. This way you only
have to backup a much smaller file and your old mail is safe in an Identity
that is only used for searching. Anything you try to do is going to be
doubly hard with a 10GB database.

You could try rebuilding your Spotlight cache files first to see if that
helps. Click on the rebuild button in Entourage preferences --> Spotlight.
Other wise testing in a new Identity is the only way to know for sure if
it's database corruption.

Entourage 2008 & Spotlight

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2009/05/entourage_and_spotlight.html>

Options for end of year archiving
<http://tinyurl.com/9dvamb>

How to manually move your data. (when import fails and/or you need to move
to a new Identity same version or revert to an older version)

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/manual_install.html>

If you decide that you want to rebuild, make sure you have a humongous
amount of drive space. Make a duplicate in the Finder first as additional
backup. A rebuild does make a duplicate, but sometimes in the process the
original and backup get merged resulting in total disaster. It's rare but
it happens.

How to rebuild:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html>

 

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks Diane - my normal exchange file is 2gb and the rest are imported from
pst archive files and stored locally, so I guess I have 2 identities?

I've hit the rebuild button, but I don't know how to tell if anything is
actually happenening, but since then I have tried to search an easy thing
(my email address) but it still brings up nothing....

Can I just delete the file at caches/metadata/microsoft/entourage/2008/Main
Identity? I assume that's just the index file?


THANKS

 

[Ron Edwards]

So, I thought I would move those meta files and click rebuild. When I opened
Entourage again and clicked rebuild, it immediately gave me a new set of
folders and started reindexing!

BUT!! Spotlight still shows no emails.....

At least, I assume, that tells me the index cache is not corrupt and is
working!

Doesn't fix my problem though..... :-(

 

[Diane Ross]

Thanks Diane - my normal exchange file is 2gb and the rest are imported from
pst archive files and stored locally, so I guess I have 2 identities?

Nope that's all in one Identity.

I've hit the rebuild button, but I don't know how to tell if anything is
actually happenening, but since then I have tried to search an easy thing
(my email address) but it still brings up nothing....

Can I just delete the file at caches/metadata/microsoft/entourage/2008/Main
Identity? I assume that's just the index file?

Yes. Note if you had two Identities then you would have seen Main Identity
and another Identity listed.

Let's do this....Create a new Identity and enter your Exchange account info.
Let Entourage sync back up to your account, then run a search. Does it work
now? If yes, then we can discuss what to do with the mail that is in folders
"On My Computer".

 

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks Diane - I see what you mean now.

I setup a new identity. Made sure spotlight box was ticked and rebuild to be
sure. The identity appeared in the metadata cache, so was indexed. Spotlight
wouldn't find the emails.....

So not sure where that leaves me!!!!

TIA!

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Thanks Diane - I see what you mean now.

I setup a new identity. Made sure spotlight box was ticked and rebuild to be
sure. The identity appeared in the metadata cache, so was indexed. Spotlight
wouldn't find the emails.....

So not sure where that leaves me!!!!

Have you made sure that you have Apple menu --> System Preferences...
--> Spotlight --> Search Results tab --> "Mail" selected?

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Diane Ross]

I setup a new identity. Made sure spotlight box was ticked and rebuild to be
sure. The identity appeared in the metadata cache, so was indexed. Spotlight
wouldn't find the emails.....

So not sure where that leaves me!!!!

Did you go through the entire list in the article of things you needed to
check? There are several options to check in the troublesooting section.

<http://tinyurl.com/r6spyd>

 

[Diane Ross]

Just found this link that has some other options to try. Some are new and
'strange' but if it works, who cares.

Spotlight won¹t work? Fix a broken Spotlight menu with these troubleshooting
tips

<http://tinyurl.com/nmoeo9>

 

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks for all your help! I've spent an hour on the phone with Apple this
afternoon for the 2nd time - the first time they told me it was definitely
an Entourage issue and they couldn't help. This time, I noticed that
Mail.app mail was also missing from the searches - so I spoke to them again,
reindexed the whole HDD and now it works.....

Still don't know what the problem was, but it works again, so I'm happy!

THANKS DIANE!!