Lately, when I open Numbers to find files, if I search for the name of the file (and I know it is the file) I get nothing useful. For Example, I search for "Bills" but the only results I see are "9839.index.js" and other useless .txt and .js files.
I know that I made a file called "Bills."
Same uselessness with Spotlight Search.
I am using Mac OS Tahoe.
Why?
Why so useless?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.0
Whether you are performing a search in an application File chooser, or the Finder, they all rely on the quality and thoroughness of the Spotlight indexing and your awareness of how to use Spotlight keywords.
Narrow your search results in Finder on Mac - Apple Support
Provided that you have enabled Pages in System Settings > Spotlight > Results from Apps, then you could have used this search:
kind:pages name:bill
and that would have shown you all the pages documents having the case-insensitive string bill in their filename.
Whether you are performing a search in an application File chooser, or the Finder, they all rely on the quality and thoroughness of the Spotlight indexing and your awareness of how to use Spotlight keywords.
Narrow your search results in Finder on Mac - Apple Support
Provided that you have enabled Pages in System Settings > Spotlight > Results from Apps, then you could have used this search:
kind:pages name:bill
and that would have shown you all the pages documents having the case-insensitive string bill in their filename.
I also mentioned that Spotlight does case-insensitive searches and when I tested this query:
kind:pages name:bill
It found three test files that I created specifically for your use case.
Joel Patterson wrote:
The document is named "Bills" and you suggested "name:bill"
I tried "name:bill" but that does not work...
I did not jump the gun, I tried what you wrote and Search/Spotlight returned useless results: a bunch of .js files
You jumped on the wrong search token. “file” is not a specific “kind”
The example was given for finding Pages documents using “kind:pages,” if that helps clarify the problem.
I downvoted this because when I followed the directions at the link, I still got nothing. I did search Name "Bills" Kind: file.
I tried searching on other words that were in filenames and got nothing, like Rolling because I know I have Rolling Stones music files on the Mac.
In the system settings > Spotlight > Results, Pages and Numbers were already turned on.
I am reduced to scrolling through filenames in the finder to locate my files, like this was a TRS-80.
The document is named "Bills" and you suggested "name:bill"
I tried "name:bill" but that does not work...
I did not jump the gun, I tried what you wrote and Search/Spotlight returned useless results: a bunch of .js files
There is no specific example in that link that I provided for finding Pages documents with a specific name. Reread my previously tested example and try it before jumping the gun…
Why does Search give useless results in Pages, Numbers, MacOS?
